Shinji Ikari and the Academy of GEHIRN
by jclong
Summary: Take 1 gal. NGE, add a dash of Harry Potter, a sprinkling of Lovecraft, and 2 ounces of strawberries, put in blender and set for puree. After a getting a bizarre letter in the post, Shinji's life is about to take a very unexpected turn...  Rated T for now
1. Chapter 1

I do not own anything at all. Everything is owned by the respective copy-write and trademark holders. If they say for me to take this down, then down it shall come, a tumbling.

In the darkness of midnight, in a small town far from the bustling metropolitan centers where spies kept tabs on everyone and everything, and men far older than they should be plotted against their fellow men, two figures sat in an unmarked, unassuming black van, down the road from a battered looking building. The older man sipped his tea before breaking the silence.

"Are you sure you want to leave him here? He's already traumatized, and doesn't know what happened or what's going on. He's been asking for his mother and father. Leaving him here, with them would not be a kindness as you think it would. They may be family, but there is no love in that household. They barely even speak to each other. They lost their son in the Impact Wars, and haven't been the same since."

The woman shifted in her seat uncomfortably, glancing out the side window into the darkness. "It's out of my hands, now. The arrangements have already been made. Better he lives with family than people of no relation to him. He may yet find solace in their arms, and they might see in him a second chance for happiness."

"He will be needed, in time. He will be called to the Academy. He will be called back to Tokyo-3. You know that I'm right. ADAM might be gone, but SEELE is still out there. You've read the prophecies. You've made divinations concerning all of this mess. Everything agrees on one thing. The Angels will return, in time. It's no accident that that boy still lives. He is prophesied to do battle. To stand there, at the Abyss and fight. He should be trained for it."

"He will, when he is older. For now, let him have the semblance of a normal life. We still have obligations to meet. The rest of the world thinks that it is safe, now. We know the truth. NERV has an obligation to keep that truth. Yesterday was a coup for us, but as much as I would like to think that was the last we'll see of Kiel Lorenz, you and I both know it won't be. SEELE is a powerful cabal."

"Their cabal is broken. We hold the Second Angel. We hold the secrets. We even have the original scrolls. They are scattered to the four winds, and they have no leader right now. They will be back, but we can keep the boy with us at the Academy, with the girl."

"No. SEELE might be broken, but they are not shattered and ground to dust as they should be. These are powerful men, and many of them claiming that they were under mind control? Impossible to prove, and just as impossible to disprove. They will wait it out. Lorenz has been waiting for centuries to trigger Impact, and he will wait however long he thinks he needs to. They'll need time for the First Angel to become viable enough to stage a resurection, at any rate. If we keep the child with us, he will be suspect to tremendous scrutiny. Let him have his childhood here, away from the prying eyes and ears of the spies and the world."

"Is that fair to the girl, then? Where is the family for her to spend her youth with?"

"You know that's an impossibility. She has no family. By all rights she shouldn't even exist. Golems do not have souls. Golems most certainly are not living, breathing, little girls."

"And yet she exists. They made her as a focus for another Impact. We should destroy her, and remove any possibility of impact."

"But, like I said, she is a little girl, as alive as you or me. She'll grow up in a the Academy. It will be normal enough. She'll need lessons to control her abilities early on, anyway. I will take her as my ward. No-one will question it. Besides, my daughter's always wanted a baby sister."

"When will the boy arrive here?" The shadowy man mentally congratulated himself on a smooth change of subjects.

"Section-2 should be delivering him to the house in the morning. He won't remember a thing. I'm not sure if it's a blessing, or a curse, that. "

"Will they give him up, later? What if they do come to see him as a surrogate for their son?"

"If they don't want Third Impact to occur they will. Besides, I thought you said that there is no love in their household."

"Shut up. Did you tell them the truth of what happened? Of the attack, of the betrayal?"

"They know that the Ikaris were attacked at their cottage on Academy grounds, and that Yui and Gendo were killed saving their son. That's it."

"What did they say? And more importantly, what will they tell the boy?"

"I'm surprised you didn't listen in on the conversation, Professor. They'll tell him that there was an accident at the train station. Each year they'll take him to visit a pair of tombstones with their names on them, unless he doesn't want to go. They'll say nothing of the truth. They blame Gendo for all of this. Even as they weep for him, they curse his name. They said that they always expected Gendo to come to a violent end. He was always a rowdy one, even for a Battle-Mage. "

"He always liked a good scrap. That never changed, even after the Impact and the Impact Wars. He was also a cunning strategist. He could have assumed control, but he didn't. He was dedicated to Yui and to his son."

"But he didn't, and now we're here. I never could see what Yui saw in him. I wouldn't be caught dead with the man. Romantically, I mean."

Professor Kozo Fuyutsuki, Headmaster of the Tokyo-3 Academy of GERHIN, Leader of the Secret Society of NERV, Veteran of Second Impact and a General from the collection of battles and wars collectively known as the Impact Wars, and Wizard Extraordinaire, glanced over at Dr. Naoko Akagi, Professor of Applied Magics, Thatamurgy, his second in command in NERV and trusted adviser.

"The hour is late. Shall we retire? Section 2 already has a watch set up on the house, and the wards are in place."

"What, no dinner first? What kind of woman do you take me for?"

Fuyutsuki rolled his eyes as he started the van.


	2. Chapter 2

Shinji Ikari stared out at the blood red ocean, trying to think. It was stained with the sins of man, or at least that's what his aunt always said, when she didn't think that he was in earshot. It made as much sense to him as any other theory that got bandied about. The Antarctic Event twenty-two years ago remained as much a mystery today as it was when it happened.

One minute, the Earth held 7 continents, 192 U.N. recognized countries, plus the independent City State of the Vatican. These countries held a teeming 15 billion souls, all going about their normal routines.

The next minute, there was 6 continents, 192 U.N. recognized countries, plus the independent City State of the Vatican. These countries held just under 4 billion souls, all going about in a massive panic.

However, just because the U.N. still recognized 192 countries didn't mean that there still was 192 countries. Many low lying coastal nations, and numerous island nations were simply swept off the map in the aftermath of the frozen continent of Antarctica suddenly exploding. To further compound matters, millions of people simply just ceased to be, liquefying right in front of family, friends, and co-workers, turning into an orange liquid that refused to either evaporate or freeze, despite the massive battery of tests and experiments conducted on it in later years. There was no apparent rhyme or reason to who became the "Tang", as it was quickly nicknamed. It struck people of all faiths, all nationalities, races, ideologies, and both genders.

Some thought it was the Rapture. Others thought it some other sign of the coming end of the world. No one knew for certain, and no explanation could be found that resolved all of the strange happenings. All that was known for certain was that things had changed.

But it was not the end. Mankind struggled on, as it will until the last of Mankind dies, be it on Earth or some lonely part of the universe. War erupted almost overnight, new nations were born out of the ashes of the old. Warlords carved out territories for themselves, hoarding the few precious resources available. These wars were soon known as the Impact Wars, after an early theory that a meteor had crashed or exploded over the frozen continent, although that idea had been discarded later on. Man changed the political maps more than the Event changed the geographic ones.

Today, as in another, older time, never saw the sun set on the British Empire. To be sure, it was a much different empire than it's predecessors. The throne was not in England, no, it wasn't even in the remnants of the British Isles. It sat in Moscow. A surviving heir to the British Crown had been vacationing in Moscow, visiting with his wife's parents when the Event happened. Alistair Westcraft had been far, far, far down the line of succession, so much that it actually took some time for him to figure out that he was, by all rights, King of a very soggy group of islands. He confirmed this with several others, before hatching a plan with his father in law, who just so happened to be a high ranking general in the Russian National Army.

They struck hard and fast, and by the time the rest of the world got up to speed on the whole debacle and joined in on the Impact Wars, the "new" Russian-British Empire held most of Europe, and claimed that all former colonies, protectorates and territories of either nation now belonged to them. Today, the British Empire, ruled over by His Imperial Majesty Alistair Westcraft, sat as the largest of the super powers, holding the British Isles, mainland Europe, Russia, half of the original country of Canada, India and Pakistan, Australia, Japan and the Balkans.

The next largest of the super powers was the American Remnant, bitterly holding onto the East and West Americas, as a new sea, dubbed the Donovan Sea, flooded out the low lying middle of the United States. In the north on East America, Canada belonged to the British Empire, but on the West, it belonged to the Remnant. Eager for fertile land to replace the flooded breadbasket, the Remnant had invaded South America, looking to the tropical lands for resources. The CIA, who took the reigns of government, took off the proverbial kid's gloves, and went to town. Citing Monroe Doctrine, the American Remnant put down all other nation's interests in the continent, and had removed any would be warlord from within either through bribery and employment, or through a series of brutal and short wars.

It came as a surprise to all that the regions that stayed mostly the same politically were in Africa and Southeast Asia. New leadership arose, and some countries grew while others shrank or vanished, but not to the extent displayed elsewhere.

When the dust settled, for the most part, the newly reformed United Nations held 87 member nations, and the world sat at an estimated population of 3 billion. All it had taken was four years, untold suffering, but man struggled on.

But all of this was old news to one Shinji Ikari, who hadn't even been born when the Event happened. He had been born even after the reestablishment of the U.N. as the forum for nations to discuss things without immediately resorting to open warfare. So, while he was trying to think as he stared out at the red waters, he wasn't trying to puzzle out the cause or reason why things were as they were. It could have been a meteor, a massive prototype weapon, a giant of light or the wrath of God, for all it mattered to him. He was trying to think, oddly enough, about what he should think of the letter he had received in the post this morning.

It was strange enough that it was an actual letter, written by hand, on actual parchment, with what he suspected was a fountain pen. Even stranger, the envelope had been sealed with wax, dark red in color, with the shape of two crossed swords in the center of a circle. Odd designs lined the edges of the envelope, which in turn had been mailed in a small wooden box. It was all very elaborate and impressive, in the age of digital communication.

The letter itself read thus:

**To one Mr. Shinji Ikari, greetings and salutations. It is with great pleasure that I formally and personally invite you to the Academy of GERHIN of Tokyo-3. I had the pleasure of knowing both of your parents, as they too were once students here.**

**Please convoy my greatest respects to your Aunt and Uncle, and please look to your email for a more thorough message, detailing the particulars of coming here. All travel and lodging arrangements have been made.**

**However, it would not do for you to speak of GERHIN to anyone besides your Aunt and Uncle. While this may seem all very strange to you, please bear with us for the time being.**

**With the Greatest of Respect,**

**Kozo Fuyutsuki, **

**Headmaster of GERHIN Academy**

After reading the flowing script, Shinji had opened his email account to find no new emails. Nothing in his spam folder even came near to matching anything written in the letter. Running through various internet searches netted no information of any organization called GERHIN. All he could find out about the name was that it mean "brain" in German. Why would an academy in Tokyo-3 be called BRAIN (in all capitals, at that) Academy? Why would a school not even have an address or telephone listing on the internet, somewhere? The name of Kozo Fuyutsuki likewise turned up little. The only thing he had found was a small series of high level biology papers, talking about things he had no hope of understanding. He couldn't see his parents having been involved with anything like that; they had been farmers before the automobile accident. How could they have been involved with some biology doctor and a mysterious school? No overhead map or satellite picture of Tokyo-3 showed any unaccounted for stretch of land, no building showed being home to GERHIN. To even reassure himself that he had not woken up in some strange other world, he searched for his parent's obituaries. The article showed that both Gendo and Yui Ikari had died after a drunk driver had plowed into the train station they were waiting at while on vacation. It made mention that his father was a farmer, who grew fruit trees in the south. It mentioned him, not by name but said that the baby boy had only narrowly missed being killed, and was being sent to live with his mother's sister. Both his aunt and uncle were working at the diner downtown, so he couldn't ask them about this yet, if he even asked them about it at all. He hated troubling them with, well, anything.

They cared for him, after a fashion, teaching him to cook for himself, to be able to feed himself as they were rarely home, working long hours at the diner they owned. They had him educated, they kept a roof over his head and paid for his cello, but when they looked at him they saw only the sister they had lost, and the son they had lost before her. They took great pains to conceal their grief from him, but he knew that it was all that he brought upon them. He was an obligation they didn't want and couldn't refuse. Their home was too far on the outskirts of the town for the school bus to come in to pick him up, and the schedule his guardians kept did not allow for them to drop him off or pick him up from school. Instead, they had a neighbor of theirs, being a retired teacher, instruct him and in return he would do chores in the man's house and on his small farm, in addition to a small monetary fee. So he grew into a quite, introverted child who longed for the closeness of family and friends but was unaware that was what he craved.

This letter was far too strange to not bring it up however, as it even went so far as to mention them directly. On the other hand, it was also so strange that it seemed to be some sort of very elaborate hoax, although what it aimed to do escaped him. So it was now that he found himself sitting on the cliff overlooking the red water, trying to puzzle out what it was that he should do. Making decisions had never been his thing. He would always agonize over what to do in any situation that found him outside of his comfort zone, which was his small room upstairs, listening to his music. It was probably the one thing anyone could say that he loved. Music was so simple, so pure in it's emotion. Through it he could convoy all the things that he felt, from sadness through joy and into mindless rage. All could be expressed through the strings of his cello in all the ways he could not articulate with words. Sometimes, however, when he was caught up in playing in the room in the upper story room, he would produce sounds and melodies that both his guardians and his teacher would swear not possible. It never occurred when someone was with him in the room he was playing in, and if asked, he would not remember them, having been "spaced out" to be able to recall the movements of his hands and bow over the strings, and eventually they stopped asking, instead choosing to try to ignore the strange, otherworldly and haunting notes. It frightened them, sometimes, the intensity he showed when caught up in playing. It made him look more like his father than his mother.

He finally came to the decision that he would go home, and if no email arrived by the time his guardians returned home, he would disregard the whole thing as some weird, tasteless joke at his expense.

It would be a near thing, ultimately, but he would get the promised email twenty-five minutes before they were due home. He would never find out how close he came to throwing the box and letter away.

Einz, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Headmaster Kozo Fuyutsuki sat in his office, staring at the wreckage that used to be a computer terminal. He absolutely hated the damn things. In fact, he held an active dislike for anything more complicated than a microwave, or possibly an automated coffeepot.

It also didn't help that the pictures kept snickering at him as he looked at the sparking ruin sitting on his desk. If he didn't know for certain that they couldn't escape the two dimensional world they were depicted in, he would have suspected one of them of sabotage. That, and he knew that he had knocked his tea into the keyboard, but that certainly shouldn't have caused the monitor screen to catch fire, or the box housing the internal components to explode.

Sighing, he pressed a button on the desk. "Aoba, can you come in here please?"

The door to his office and study opened, and one Shigeru Aoba came walking in, tossing some popcorn at the two-headed bird resting on a pedestal as he passed by. Both heads began fighting over the kernels of caramel and corn. His goofy expression died as he laid eyes on the smoking mess in front of the Headmaster.

"What'd you do this time, Professor? I mean, come on, that's the fourth one this quarter. Dr. Akagi is gonna be **pissed**."

Professor Fuyutsuki shot an exasperated look at his assistant. "All I did was knock my tea on the keyboard. That's it! That shouldn't do this, so don't even start. Just... just get me a new one, get it hooked up and don't tell her."

"Don't tell who what?" A new voice sounded from just beyond the doorway, as Naoko Akagi strolled in, carrying a box of books. She sniffed the air, her eyes narrowing as she smelled the foul odor of burnt plastics and ruined electronics. "Heavens above, Kozo, why do you keep ruining those poor machines? It's just basic technology." She dropped the box on the expansive desk, which was more like a large table, running ten feet long and half as wide, made of a solid piece of ash. Strange and otherworldly designs were carved into the flat surface in places, inlaid with iron. "Ritsuko is not going to be happy with you."

Growing irate at the repeated statements of the obvious, the headmaster raised his hands in the air as if seeking supplication from a higher power. "I know, I know. What I don't know is why these blasted machines keep going bad on me. This isn't even funny anymore. I don't know how I can get any work done these days." He looked at the box of books, and then at the thaumaturge. "Are those his books?"

She sighed, moving to a chair off to the side and flopping down into it. "Yes, they're his books. Everything he needs to get started on his training once he gets here." She helped herself to some tea from the coffee table next to her seat. "Aoba, be a dear and go do something useful somewhere else."

Aoba rolled his eyes as he grinned at the headmaster. "Sure thing. I'll go find another box for the boss."

He left, whistling a jaunty tune, tossing some more caramel corn at the two-headed eagle, which screeched at him for more.

Kozo rubbed his head, resting his elbows on his desk. "That boy is impossible. Guye is going to get fat if he keeps eating those sweets."

Naoko, however, wasn't feeling very sympathetic. "Then don't let him. He's your bird after all." She sipped her tea, making a face. "Why did you make chai again? You know I hate this stuff."

He shot his second a sardonic look. "I made it because I like it. You don't have to drink it you know. Go drink some of that abominable coffee your daughter likes." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "This is the worst time for a computer to die on me. I was going to email him the instructions on how to get here."

Naoko kept drinking her chai, pausing only to stare into her cup, as if trying to wrest the secrets of reality from within the milky tea. "I take it you sent him one of those silly letters of yours."

He snorted. "I happen to like doing some things with a touch of class. Something this important shouldn't be left to mere electronics. Besides, I shouldn't have had to do it in the first place. He should have been brought up here. He should have been training all his life, not just about to start."

"Are you still harping on about that? What's done is done. One would think that you'd not be hell bent on ruining the childhood of the only child of your best pupil. One would think that you'd want to uphold what the poor boy's parents would want for him. One would also think that you would have better taste in tea." She stuck her tongue out at him, making her not look at all like a fifty year old woman who held two doctorates and was an accomplished thaumaturge and mage.

Resisting the urge to magic her teacup out of her hands, he settled for shaking his head. "I picked up a taste for it while in Afghanistan." He grinned as her face darkened into a scowl.

She scowled at him, ignoring his smile. "I thought we weren't going to discuss what you did in Afghanistan. In fact, I thought we had agreed that we were going to forget that you even went to that miserable province."

His smile growing lofty now, he moved from his desk to the low couch opposite the coffee table. "It wasn't a province when I was there."

She put the cup down, starting to get really angry when the office's door opened up and a head with an unruly mop of blue hair poked in. "Mom?" The girl's voice was soft and quiet. "Mom? Are you in here? Rits said you were here."

Naoko's expression changed instantly as she called out to her adopted daughter. "Yes Rei, I'm here. Come in, dear."

Rei hesitated, looking for the headmaster for permission before entering one of his most private domains. Despite being one of the few people at GERHIN who was allowed to enter his office at any time, the shy albino-like girl put a lot in propriety and observing the customs of privacy. At his wave to enter, she pushed forwards into the large room, shutting the door behind her. She walked over to them, quickening her pace slightly to pass Guye, who hissed at her quietly.

Naoko nodded to another chair, and Rei carefully sat down in it, smoothing out her blue skirt. She glanced silently at the tea kettle before turning her crimson gaze back to the headmaster, who laughed.

"Help yourself Rei. It's milk chai with honey. You won't need to add sugar. You know you don't need to ask. How many times have you had tea in here?" While he asked the question, which was clearly rhetorical, he winked at Naoko, who mentally groaned.

"I have had tea in this office eight thousand, four hundred and twenty-six times, including now." The extremely literal girl settled back into her usual chair, rubbing her shoulders against the velvet upholstery. She sipped her tea before continuing. "Mom, something is wrong with the scrying stones in the northeast towers. No matter who tries to use them, they show only dark fog, with a pale red glow that blinks three times before fading, and then only blackness until another scrying is attempted."

Both mages raised their eyebrows at this bit of information. "Why is it something wrong with the stones? What do you think could cause this?" Naoko prodded her daughter, trying to get the gears turning inside the girl's head.

Rei shook her head once. "It is something with the stones. No-one should be able to get the exact same scrying as another person, and it is the same vision each time, no matter who uses them, or what they try to look for or at. The rules governing the stones do not allow for such behavior."

It was odd, and very strange. However, it wasn't something that would get most people at the Academy bent out of shape over. Most would try to figure out what it meant, what could cause such a thing. Rei, however, was not most people in more ways than the visually obvious, even overlooking the unnatural manner in which she came to be, which was a closely guarded secret, known only to a select few.

Kozo frowned, thinking on it himself. "What does your sister say?" He looked at one of his bookcases, scanning the titles for the text on divination and far-seeing. He seemed to remember hearing something like this, but he couldn't place it.

Rei looked at him blankly, as if the answer was obvious. "She said to ask Mom. She's busy with the Magi." She looked to her mother expectantly. It was not unlike the way a baby bird looks to it's mother to regurgitate food into it's beak.

Naoko rolled her eyes, finishing her cup. She played with it for a little bit, rolling it around in her hands while she thought. "I'm not sure dearest. It certainly sounds strange. What do you think it means?"

Rei tilted her head, staring off into space, her own cup halfway to her lips. After a few moments, she completed the task of moving the cup to her mouth and drank. "I think it means that the stones are broken."

Sighing, Naoko poured herself more tea. "What does Madame Beruski think? The stones are her domain, after all. Did you try other methods of scrying what you wanted?" She paused, watching her daughter's face intently. "What was it you were trying to see Rei?"

Rei managed to somehow look embarrassed and shamefaced without actually having any expression cross her face. "I... I wanted to see the zoo."

Naoko, however, wasn't having it. Rei had never been interested in zoos before. Since she was stuck within the grounds of the Academy, the concept of going somewhere to look at exotic creatures didn't appeal to her. She put her cup down on the table and crossed her arms. "Rei, what were you trying to see? I know it wasn't the zoo. You know I'll just ask Sophia if you don't tell me."

Rei stared into her teacup, in the exact mirror of her mother a little while ago, as if trying wrest an acceptable answer from the tea. In a softer voice, she murmmerd something.

Naoko cocked her head. "Out with it."

Rei gave up, and repeated her reply louder. "I was trying to see who Shinji Ikari was."

Both adults narrowed their eyes at the girl who was trying to melt into the chair. Kozo spoke up first, his voice kind. "Rei, how did you come across that name? Why are you interested in who he is?" He put a hand on one of the young girl's, which was shaking.

"I... I... picked it up when I was astral scanning. I didn't mean too... I was bored and wanted to see what was going on in the world. I head your voices say his name. I asked Rits about it, and she just said to ignore it and not ask you."

Naoko leaned back in her chair, sighing again. "Rei, it's dangerous for you to just randomly scry like that. There's reasons behind the limitations on what you're allowed to do. It's for your own safety. How long have you been doing unaccompanied viewings? The truth, young lady." Her voice was stern; she didn't normally have to use it on Rei, who was normally the "good" daughter. Ritsuko, on the other hand, well, she hadn't quite burned out all her youthful wildness in college. Rei was normally a stickler for the rules.

Rei looked into her teacup again before replying. "Two months and seven days. I just wanted to see things outside, I'm always cooped up here." Into her voice crept the barest hint of accusation. "I just wanted to see if what I heard was true."

Kozo interjected again, shooting a warning glance at the girl's mother. "What did you hear, Rei? Was it about Ikari?"

She nodded, a brief up and down affair. "You were talking about whether or not it was a good thing that we were becoming...friends." She choked the last word out, blinking back tears. She sniffed, and downed the rest of her tea quickly before standing up. "I... I need to go wash my face." With that, she fled the study, sniffling.

Both teachers looked at each other silently. Naoko buried her head in her hands. "Well, I've made a mess of this. What are we going to do Kozo?"

He decided to let the we part of her statement slide without comment. "Well, it might not be as bad as it sounds. It's true that she is stuck up here, when all the other children get to leave for the summer and winter, as well as field trips and free days. She hasn't left GERHIN grounds since we brought her here. When you take that into account with the fact that she has an extremely hard time making friends, being the only year round child resident, who has two family members on the faculty **and** is on friendly terms with the headmaster himself, it''s only natural that she would turn to something like this. I'm actually surprised that she hasn't been doing it longer, or that we didn't see it coming."

"That's rich, coming from the man who at first wanted to kill her. That doesn't change the fact that it's too dangerous for her to be doing it in the first place. I know she's had a hard time of it, I mean, Rits was the only other child here year round, but even she vacationed with friends on the holidays sometimes, and then she left for college and now she's back and working here. I've always been here though. I haven't left the grounds except for a few extremely important times. If one of my daughter's can't leave the grounds on vacation or even a shopping trip into the city, neither will I."

Kozo shook his head as he poured her more tea, and pushed the cup into her hands. "I know, I know. And she knows too. She's a teenager, Naoko. This is her own quiet little rebellion. It's normal, but it is distressing. But it's not the end of the world. Besides, you should be happy. Apparently, she's going to get a new friend soon."

His words of reassurance had the opposite effect, however. His trusted second in command, to whose children he served as a god-parent (although he originally was wary of Rei before she grew on him) blanched, and cursing, threw the teacup against the stone wall in a rage, where it shattered, the sound spooking Guye, who had been dozing off, into a squawking fit.

"Oh, no. There is no way that any spawn of Gendo Ikari is getting anywhere near my daughter. They won't even have the same classes. They won't even be in the same lunch hour. In fact, they only times they'll be in the same room is when the entire school is at a function." She glared at her old friend, and then turned her head to follow his gaze at the wet spot on the wall, and the shattered china on the floor.

"Ohhhh... shit. Kozo, I'm sorry. I'll fix it. I'll make it better. I know how much the china means to you." Even as she spoke she darted over to the broken bits, and scooped them up into her dress, ignoring the tea as it soaked the wool fabric.

Kozo shook his head and smiled softly. "Well... it's not as if I haven't broken my fair share of it, either." He leveled his gaze on his blushing second. "But why the hostility towards the boy? I thought you liked him, or at least felt sorry for him from the fuss you put up about keeping him with his family."

"Just because I'm sympathetic to the poor soul because of what happened to his parents and who his mother was does not mean that I'm going to let anything with Gendo's genes near me or my daughters. That man... ugrgh. Nothing but disaster, trouble and heartache ever came from him, even with his iron morals. If his son is even the tiniest fraction of the manipulator of people he was, he'll have my poor sheltered daughter out of her clothes and into his bed. The fact that he was a war hero didn't change the fact that that man could manipulate things so that an elf would buy iron from him and think it got a good deal. I'm not exposing my baby girl to that."

His only response was to grunt. After draining his cup, he looked up at the ceiling and the Tree of the Sephirot painted on it. "You may not have a choice. Having a friend, a real friend, from the sounds of it, by the way she was acting, would be good for the girl. You know she needs one. When was the last time you saw her go looking for more information on something all on her own volition? Besides, he may have Gendo's genes, but he's also Yui's son. That has to count for something. And Gendo wasn't really that manipulative, even if he did nothing to quell the rumors otherwise. He just had a plan for everything. He didn't force anyone to go along with what he wanted. He just knew, he just had a knack for being able to present the choices and take advantage of events so that he came out on top. It was only after people looked past the choices they made at the time to see the chain of events did they realize why he was nicknamed the "Bastard King". He wasn't mean, or cruel. He was just that good."

"And look where it got him. He pissed off the wrong person, an ancient cyborg mage who'd been planning something horrible for centuries. He mucked up Keel's plan, forced his hand when things were not ready, saved the world, for the time being at least. Too bad he wasn't as dead as people thought, because, oh! Look out, here comes Keel for revenge. Now his son has to shoulder the burden of saving the world, and despite the miracle upset that bought Shinji his continued life, Keel will be back again. He was good, yes, but not good enough. Now we have to pick up the pieces and hope to heaven that his son will be able to finish what he started."

"Still, I don't see it as a good reason to deny them friendship. He'll be all alone here, a brand new face among already established cliques. Once the other students find out just who his father was, he'll be further alienated. Others will want him as a friend for the status he'll bring. He'll be starting late as a student on top of all that, which is trouble enough, let alone as someone with the burden of prophecy hanging over them. Which, I would like to point out, is your fault. They could be good for each other. She'll help him get settled into life here at the school, and he might bring her out of her shell."

She pointed a finger at him in accusation. "Don't try to guilt trip me just because I broke your china and said that you couldn't train him as a child soldier from infancy. Don't you dare put any of that on me. Besides, what do you think will happen if they do become good friends, and then somehow, someway, she gets taken and is used to focus another Impact? He'll have to decide to either kill his friend, or kill mankind. Great choice. One way, he's dead, with the rest of the world, which to him will probably look like the best choice, because, on the other hand he will have saved mankind, but had to **murder his friend, this sweet, innocent, little girl**. If he doesn't go and off himself right after that, he'll be stuck in an institute for the rest of his life. I know of only one person who could make that type of choice and still function as a normally as he did the rest of the time, but guess what! He not here anymore."

"So, just because of the absolute worst case scen-"

"Don't say that word."

"So just because of the worst possible situation, then, you'll keep them separated. You. Who adopted an unholy abomination of... everything, as your daughter." Kozo raised his hands placatingly as he spoke. "Don't get me wrong, she's definitely grown on me."

She snorted. "You dote on her like she's the daughter and granddaughter you've never had. You spoil her in every way that you can. For her birthday, when she was five, you made everyone's hair blue and eyes red for a month! AND fixed it so that both dyes and magic wouldn't change it, or color contacts."

"You'll notice that I never said that she wasn't a **cute** abomination. But in the eyes of all the rest of the world, if they were to know the secrets behind her, that is what they would label her as. She should not exist. But that's my point. You care too much to do that to her. You won't keep them apart."

Naoko harrumphed in a most unladylike way. "Just wait and see, just wait and see. I'll-"

She was interrupted by the door opening again, as the eldest Akagi daughter strode in, clearly unhappy. "Mother, why is Rei bawling her eyes out in her roo- oh WHAT DID YOU DO TO YOUR TERMINAL THIS TIME?"

Ritsuko Akagi stood staring at the long-forgotten computer, mouth agape in disbelief. "How many? How many must you destroy before you're satisfied?"

"Not now. We've got bigger issues at hand than a few contrary computers. Rei's bawling her eyes out?" Kozo was very, very concerned. It was true, what Naoko had said. He spoiled Rei so very much, whenever he could. Of course, it was easy to spoil her. Most of the things that most children would have asked for she didn't even think of. It was the smallest and oddest of things it seemed that coaxed one of her rare smiles out. A specific type of tea, or dish at school meal times. An inside joke during important announcements. Rare and hard to find texts. And of course, the one that stood out in everyone's mind, the color alteration of everyone's hair and eyes when she was five. She had actually squealed with delight when she woke up that morning. She wasn't so different from everyone else, for a month at least. That had been the moment she counted her mother's boss as a friend, and not just the funny man that she had tea with sometimes. She had indeed grown on him.

"Well, bawling her eyes out for her. If it was anyone else it would just them being a little weepy. Seriously, I send her up her 'cause something's going on with the scrying stones, which seem to be working again, with no issues, by the way, and then, a half hour later, she comes tearing through the living room crying and locks herself in her room and won't tell me what's up."

Naoko narrowed her eyes at her daughter, feeling a slight bit of deja vu. "Rits, did you know that she's been doing unsupervised scrying?"

Now it was Ritsuko's turn to turn white. "Ah...erm... yes? Maybe a little?" She cringed, waiting for the outburst she knew was coming.

"**Ritsuko Morgana Akagi**. What about it being insanely dangerous for Rei to do that do you not understand? Did we not explain it to you enough as you were growing up? Do you not understand the dangers inherent of Rei being, well, Rei?"

Kozo decided to step in before things got out of hand and more of his china needed to be reconstituted. "Ritsuko, you should have come to one of us about this, or at least put a stop to it yourself. We are sympathetic with her about why she's being doing it, but it's too dangerous. The risk is too high. But, since you are here, can you go find out why Aoba is taking so long to get me another computer? I do have work I need to get done."

Ritsuko, who knew that her mother only ever pulled out the full name when she was really upset, recognized a get out of jail free card when one hit her in the face. Mumbling an affirmative, she ducked back out of the office.

Naoko, never happy with someone interrupting her yelling at her kids, especially over something as major as this, turned her killer stare at Kozo.

"Please, Naoko, enough with the death glare. I've been stared at by Ikari. What makes you think that yours is anything terrifying?" He paused for a moment, before plunging on. "Besides, I didn't want the rest of my china to get smashed."

Naoko tried to keep her imitation of Gendo from turning into a smirk, but failed miserably. "Fine. Fine. I won't go out of my way to keep them separated, but I'm not going to go out of the way to make him welcome in my home, or introduce them. If we don't throw them together, she won't approach him. She'll sit at watch him like she does most the others. If she really wants to make a friend, she'll have to do it the hard way. And I'll make it hard on him as well. I'll be watching him so hard he'll think that I'm a beholder that took human form."

"I don't think he'll make the connection. He won't know what a beholder is." He frowned. "Don't introduce him to one as a way to show him the similarities."

"Whatever. Wait, what work do you need to get done? You don't do anything up in this office but administrative stuff. Classes aren't in session, and we don't have any gaps in the faculty that need to be filled."

He shrugged. " I told you that I needed to email Shinji his travel instructions and train tickets. I was trying to do that when I knocked my tea onto the keyboard. Though that doesn't explain the rest of the computer."

"What travel instructions? You're not sending someone to go pick him up?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't want to scare him off by having Section 2 pick him up. They're a little intense for the rest of the world."

"That doesn't mean you can't send one of the staff! You could even go and pick him up." She stopped, and started shaking her head violently. "No, no. NO! You're going to string him along, and feed him information and train him bit by bit without telling him what's going on, aren't you. That's a horrible plan. That's insane. What happened to you wanting to train him from infancy? This is the exact opposite of that!"

"Well, it's too late to do what I wanted to in the first place, so now I'm just following the plan left by-"

"Heavens above, Kozo, are you insane? You've gone daft, right before my eyes. How can you even think of following that madman's plans? When I pressured to have him placed with his family it most certainly was not because it was part of his plans. It was so he could have "

"It's not as bad as all that. Besides, I was going to send Katsuragi out to greet him at the station when he arrives. She's exuberant enough that I'm sure she'll manage to convince him to at least visit the Academy."

"You mean that she's a big enough flirt that she'll flirt with a teenager in order to tap him as an asset in her own private was against SEELE." Naoko's voice was flat.

"She means well. It's not really her fault that her entire life's goal is to see them roasting over a slow fire for all eternity. It's also not like she does it on purpose either, or that she tries to hide it if anyone calls her on it."

"That's the probably only reason I can stand her. But, when you look at it all, none of us are innocent, are we? We all keep the dark secrets of reality. We do it in a good cause, we do it to keep the world alive, but we're all part of a vast conspiracy in the end."

"Rei is probably the most innocent of us all. We've kept the details from her. She knows nothing of the purpose of her existence."

"This is all so very depressing. I hate thinking about the conspiracy." She stood up, stretching and yawning. "If you promise to not kill my computer, I'll let you email the boy from my terminal. The damage has already been done, so we might as well see if this hand-basket we're in indeed lands in hell."

"I keep telling you people... It's not my fault!"

Einz, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Haruko Sato stared at the letter his nephew handed him in fear and dread. "Absolutely not. You are not going anywhere near Tokyo-3. This is madness. How could they even think that we would allow this?"

The last bit was not aimed towards Shinji, but rather his wife, Kasumi. "Intolerable. The sheer arrogance."

Kasumi quickly shooed Shinji from the room. "Be quiet!" she hissed at her husband. "You'll arouse his curiosity. We can't just say we know nothing about what's going on now, you idiot. Now we have to figure out what to tell him." She took the ornate letter from her husband's hands and sank into one of the chairs in the kitchen. "Why, after all this time? Why are they sending him this? His mother was younger when they came for her. He's never shown any of the real signs. Not like she did. I had hoped when his birthday came and passed that he didn't have it. But why are they sending him this? He's six years to late for the first classes. If he hasn't shown any talent by now, he should be worthless to them; a laughingstock."

Haruko was pacing back and forth. "We'll tell him no, that's what we'll tell him. We don't need to explain it to him. The old man is a lunatic, they all are. They killed your sister, Kas. They killed-"

"Keep your voice down. The boy is not an idiot. If he's not trying to listen in right now, he will if he hears you going on about that. He said that they emailed him tickets. If they want him so badly, why don't they send someone out here to pick him up?" Her color drained from her face. "You don't think that they're going to use him as bait do you?"

"I wouldn't put it past them. He said that they were going to put wards up around the house. He's supposed to be safe here. Why send him so far from any safety, if not to invite an attack. That's why there's no escort. They're trying to draw them out of hiding, to pounce on them when they attack him."

Kasumi wailed and buried her head in her arms, sobbing into the tabletop. "Will this war of theirs ever leave our family? Why, when we have lost so much? They take our son, my sister, and now they want him."

"I'll not send the boy out to die alone, out there on some train going to Tokyo-3. I will not send my family out into harm's way. That is final. We'll burn the letter, the box, and we'll tell him that we'll explain it when he's older. Once he reaches his majority. He can make his own decision then. It's only a few more years." He put the tea kettle on the stove and started the eye. Walking around the table, he hugged his wife, in a rare display of affection. "Make us some tea, and I'll go get the boy." He swallowed, nervous now that they had to at least let the boy know that things were not as they seemed. That they had been keeping him in the dark. That everything he knew to be true might not be as real as he had thought. The boy was fragile. There was no way that this was going to be easy. The boy was going to be hurt. It would only be a matter of time until they found out if he was hurt enough to run away to take these madmen up on their offer. He quietly prayed that they were doing the right thing.

Later that night, Shinji lay on his bed staring at the ceiling. This day was certainly not what he had imagined when he had woken up. He still had no idea about what to think of the letter he had gotten.

Now, he also had no idea about what to think of his guardians. The things that they had said made no sense at all, even after they called him back into the kitchen. They knew something about this GERHIN place, but what? They certainly didn't like them, that was for sure. But how could they have been involved in the death of his parents? He had seen the report on the internet; he's seen the graves, he visited them every year to bring them flowers. He had even seen the obituary in a real newspaper, quite on accident, when cleaning out the basement of his teacher. How could all of that not be true? Real newspapers were supposed to print only the truth.

_Have they been lying to me my entire life about everything? What else isn't true? What is going on?_ He tossed and turned, trying to settle down into sleep. Unfortunately, sleep seemed to be as far away from him as the answers he sought from his ceiling, even though he had put in a tiring day of farm-work. He was dead tired, but still sleep evaded him. The tugging sensation in the pit of his He slowly pulled himself up into a sitting position, slumped against the wall. He didn't sigh, because that called for more energy than he really felt like expending. His eyes flicked around the darkened room, lighting on the computer. _Maybe I should read the email again. At least they didn't come up here to delete it. I don't even have the letter anymore. _His uncle had refused to give the letter back, and even took the box from him. _He probably threw them away. Never mind that it was **my** letter._ These last two thoughts were far more bitter and resentful than Shinji normally was, who usually accepted things with an air of quiet resignation.

He padded over to the computer, trying to be quiet out of habit, even though the only other people in the house were two floors down and probably fast asleep by now. He booted the computer up, idly thinking about going downstairs to make some tea. Watching the slow progress bar on the elderly OS's boot screen, he glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was just after one in the morning. He really wanted some tea. Looking back at the computer, he sighed now, and left his room, making his way down into the kitchen.

This desire for a comforting cup of tea at this odd hour was what saved his life, the police would later decide. While Shinji was sitting in his room, a plane was flying from London-4, to the north of the house, towards Osaka-2, far to the south. The plane was about eighty-five miles from the house when something smashed into it, sending it veering off course and begin shedding parts at high speed. What had smashed into it was still a mystery, they said. They told him that they had a crash zone of over a hundred miles to search. What wasn't a mystery, however, was what had come crashing through his room into the house. It had been a large jet turbine engine, still on fire from the accident. It had pretty much obliterated the upper two floors, and ruined most of the first. His guardians had to be hospitalized, but were in stable conditions, and expected to be released soon after a cursory observation period.

When he was asked if there was anywhere he could stay for the time being, he found himself nodding, asking for access to a computer with internet to bring up his email. He explained that he had actually been getting ready to go on a trip soon to a school in Tokyo-3. From the wreckage of the house he managed to salvage his cello, which had miraculously escaped destruction, and was now adorned with numerous scratches and scuff marks. His clothes dresser, however, and closet were not so lucky. He was only able to get a few pairs of pants, two t shirts and a white button up from the laundry room in the basement. After saying something that wasn't quite a goodbye to his teacher, he was dropped off at the train station by a helpful policeman to wait for the first of the trains that would start him on his long trip to Tokyo-3.

Of course, he had completely forgotten to email the Dr. Akagi person back about him actually starting his journey.

Einz, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Naoko woke up to a finger poking her shoulder. "mom? mom? Please wake up."

Sighing, and squinting, she opened her eyes to glare at the owner of the finger and the voice. "What is it Rei? What do you want? It's... it's..." She squinted at the clock on her nightstand. "It's ten o'clock on a Saturday. I think I can be allowed to sleep in."

Rei shifted from one foot to the other. "I think something's happened to..." her voice trailed off, as she tried to squeak out the next part. "shinji ikari."

Naoko shot up in her bed. "Rei," her voice hardening as she rubbed her forehead, "Have you been trying to scry again? I thought we had discussed this last week."

Rei held up her hands in front of her like a wall. "No Mom, it's on the news! A plane engine smashed into his house last week."

Naoko's eyes shot wide open. "WHAT? Last Week?" She threw off the blankets, grabbing a robe from off the back of a chair, running out into the living room, where Ritsuko sat watching the news disinterestedly while eating a slice of toast, and feeding a small slice of bacon to her cat.

Snatching the remote from the table, Naoko rewound the news broadcast. Her eldest quirked an eyebrow at her. "Whats-"

"Hush Rits."

"The investigations team has had no luck this past week in figuring out the cause of the accident that cause Royal Airlines Flight 57AA from London-4 to Osaka-2 last week. If you recall, at about One o'clock in the morning on the fifth, the red-eye passenger flight suddenly veered off course and began to lose structural components over one hundred miles long. While everyone on board was lost in the tragic incident, miraculously on the ground there were no fatalities caused by the falling wreckage. Injuries were limited, even with the near total destruction of the Sato farmhouse, of which you can see the ruins behind me." Indeed, to Naoko's growing horror, was the remains of the battered building she had visited fifteen years ago, prior to the boy's delivery to his Aunt and Uncle. "The Satos, who own and operate a family diner in town, were hospitalized but were later released. Their nephew, by the name of Shinji Ikari, escaped without injury, not unlike another tragic accident almost fifteen years ago when a car crashed into a Tokyo-3 train station, killing his parents but sparing his life. He has since been sent to stay with friends elsewhere, until repairs are made to the family's home."

Naoko dropped the remote, her jaw slack as she stared at the photo of a young Shinji, obviously from a few years ago, holding a cello at what looked like a recital of some sort. It was obviously culled from a local newspaper. Ignoring both her daughters, she broke into a run for the main door, heading for the Headmaster's office, almost flying through the halls in her bare feet, not even thinking about the fact she was incredibly disheveled looking.

She burst into the office, throwing back the doors, while Kozo looked up in surprise. "Naoko?" He glanced at a calendar to confirm that it was not indeed his birthday today and that he had somehow missed it. "This isn't a formal deceleration of your love for me is it? Because I have to say it's not very romantic."

She shot him a death glare. "Kozo, a plane crashed into the Sato's farmhouse the day you sent him that letter! He's not been there for a week now!"

Kozo blinked twice, his jaw dropping. "WHAT?" He launched himself from his chair, flinging it backwards as he rushed to a small alcove to a cloth covered ball of smooth, heavily polished white granite that was about the size of a grapefruit. Whisking the cloth from over it, he set his palm on the top, curling his fingers down around it, and summoned the name of Shinji Ikari in his mind.

He felt the familiar rushing wind sensation as the heavily enchanted scrying stone began to do it's work, until he suddenly ran into what felt like a massive fire. He jerked back his hand, cursing in surprise and pain, and tried again. This time he felt the burning almost immediately, and when he pulled back his hand, it was smoking, and a blacked hand-print remained on the white stone. Both of the mages stared in abject terror at the sphere.

"Naoko, have you ever seen something like this before? When I tried calling up his name, I felt as if I were standing in the midst of a great fire." His voice was hushed, wiping at the black ash with the hem of his robe. It came right off, leaving the surface unmarred once more. He quickly covered it with it's silk cover.

Her voice was equally low as she inspected his hand. "No. Someone's set up a blocking ward on him, but I've never seen one that had an effect in the real world. How much does it hurt?"

"It's like I placed it in a hot oven and jerked it right back. I'll be alright." He stood there, silently staring at the covered stone, before turning back to his desk. "We'll need to get Section 2 out looking for him. If this ward did this, with that stone, I don't think any regular divination or scrying will fare any better. I don't want anyone trying, it's too dangerous. Section 2 will find him. If they can't it's because he doesn't exist on this plane anymore." He walked past his desk towards the door to his office.

Naoko, however, remained for a moment, looking at the granite ball. Turning to follow him, she spoke up, still hushed and quiet. "What does this mean? Do they have him? I haven't gotten any response from him, from that email account or any other. How could a plane have crashed into the house? The wards should have protected it from anything short of Japan being shot off into space. We had a full nine cast those wards. If they had been broken, we would have felt it. We did **not** put down half measures out there, Kozo. Something is very, very **wrong**."

"I know, I know. Lets say he's not been captured or killed. Even if he left a week ago, he should have gotten here by now. It's only a three day journey with the arrangements I set up. I'm going to need to consult the scrolls. I may need to take... further measures."

While Naoko was normally very much against the more gruesome and intense methods of obtaining information, she couldn't bring herself to argue against it in this case, at least not much. "Can you at least wait for the ravens to come back? Let's see what they can find out."

His hand snuck over to her side and clasped one of hers in it, in a display of affection both had agreed never to show outside the most private of their sanctums. "I'll just consult the scrolls and the stones. I'll hold off on the other stuff until after they get back."

While this offered her some measure of comfort, it did little about the growing ball of ice in the pit of her stomach. _What is going on?_


	3. Chapter 3

I own nothing. Everyting is owned by the respective copyright/trademark owners.

With that in mind, let's turn the crazy up to eleven, shall we?

Now, Shinji Ikari had never traveled much when he was younger. This was mostly due to the fact that losing their son to the Impact Wars, the Impact Wars themselves, and then later, their sister and her husband to the same entity that had initiated Impact. They were told that powerful wards had been emplaced on the grounds of their home, making it a safe place for the boy to grow up. They weren't stupid, they knew what that meant, despite the fact that the wizards didn't come put and say it; that there was still a danger to the boy. Not wanting to lose the last remnant of the family, they had hidden him away from the world on the farmland. Only when it came time for him to begin to attend school did they relent enough to send him down the road to the retired teacher's farm, with strict instructions that if **anything** strange or out of the ordinary were to occur, to run home and hide in the bomb shelter that they had built into the basement.

Now he was traveling by himself, alone and on his own for the first time. When you added into the fact that he was fifteen, shy, and didn't ever want to be a bother to anyone, you had a recipe for disaster. When you added all of this to the fact that he wasn't just a normal kid, and had worse things to worry about than someone stealing his money, tickets, or kidnapping him, well, any outside observer would just know that something horrible was going to happen.

Shinji was happily oblivious to this however.

The first day started off well enough, he was dropped off at the station by the chatty policeman. He had asked a lot of questions that he couldn't answer, but that hadn't dented the man's cheery demeanor any. He had wished him well and went on his way. What Shinji didn't know was that the man, sensing the potiential for disaster that the quiet boy had, remained in the station until the train arrived and he watched the boy get on. Following his return to the police station, he emailed a picture of the boy and his itenrary to the security desk at the Nottingham-2 Train Station, along with a request that they keep an eye on the boy.

Unfortunately, Shinji would never arrive at that station.

The tickets that had been provided by the mysterious headmaster were all first class tickets. Shinji felt somewhat out of place with his somewhat grubby clothing compared to the business suits and expensive looking clothing of the rest of the people in first class. This, and because of his wanting to be left alone, led him to go looking for the least occupied cabin. He found one with only one other occupant, already asleep, ticket sitting next to him on the seat. Watching the figure momentarily, trying to see if he really was asleep, he entered the cabin and sat across from him. He put his headphones in, and settled down to try to catch up on the sleep that hadn't been coming in plentiful amounts in the past three days.

When he woke up several hours later, he found his ticket stub sitting in his lap, and a youth traveling alone pass which, according to the back, entitled him to a complementary kids meal at all meal times on the trains and in the train stations, as well as a free juice from off the drinks cart.

His traveling companion was awake, and reading a book. Seeing that the boy was awake, he set his book down, allowing Shinji his first real good look at the man.

He was tall, and a westerner, with blue eyes and rust colored hair. He had stubble that looked like it hadn't seen a razor in several days. His hair was short, and it looked like it had been hacked at with a pair of scissors, rather than professionally done, or done by someone with even a little practice. He was tanned, with the exception of the pale scar tissue that crawled around his face, like someone had tried putting a map on his cheek with a knife. On closer inspection, the dusty black suit he wore was somewhat shabby looking, as if it had been worn and slept in for several days now. When he spoke, his voice was smooth and even, like the radio hosts for the classical music radio station he listened to at times.

"So, child, it seems that we are to be traveling companions, for a time at least." He nodded at the youth pass sitting in Shinji's lap. "So where are you traveling, all by yourself?" He folded his book shut without bothering to mark his place. Shinji felt himself begin to sweat under the instant questioning, the man's piercing gaze not helping matters at all.

"Umm.. I'm going to Tokyo-3. To a school." Shinji managed to talk without stuttering too much, which he felt was a major accomplishment. This man was weird.

"Ahh, the third Tokyo. A marvel of many things, Tokyo-3. It is, however, not so nearly grand as it's predecessors, in my opinion. Tokyo-1 had been an ancient city, a city of real substance. A city with history." He paused, his eyes seeming to focus on something far off, even though he was still looking at Shinji. "I'm not saying that there aren't ancient parts of Tokyo-3, if one knows where to look. Indeed, there are some parts of Tokyo-3 that are more ancient than Tokyo-1 ever was." He laughed, a cheerless sound if there ever was one. He paused again, focusing back on Shinji, and then frowned slightly. "Boy, if you don't mind me asking, what is your name?"

Shinji, wishing for nothing but to go back to sleep or for the man to go back to his book, decided to just answer the question in hopes that he lost his intrest in him. "My name's Shinji Ikari."

This did exactly the opposite of causing the man to lose his interest in the boy. "Shinji Ikari? Ikari, you say? Any relation to one Gendo Ikari, would you be?" His hand, quick as a serpent, snuck out and grabbed the boy's chin, bringing him closer for a better inspection. "Yes, yes I can see it. You greatly resemble your mother, but I seem him in you." Releasing the shocked boy, he stood, and bowed deeply. "I apologise for my impertinence, lord. Please accept my greatest of apologies. I served your father in the wars, and was unable to be on hand when the greatest of disasters struck. But this I swear to you; I shall do everything that is within my power to ensure that nothing of the like happens to you; even if it so costs me my life. I serve another Master now, but not by choice. But if you are traveling to the school, then things must be moving."

He paused in his bizarre ramblings, and Shinji took this chance to interrupt. "Sir? What are you talking about? My father was a farmer, like my uncle. He never fought in the Impact Wars, but my cousin did. And I'm not a lord, I'm not related at all to the royal family."

The man looked at him in shock. "You do not know of your past, of your history? You, the son of one of the greatest sorcerers and wizards of all time; the man who bested the High Priest of the Old Ones? The one whose loss the Shoggoths mourn even now? And above all that, you, the boy who lived? The boy who, as an **infant**, bested The One who Must not be Named? The ruler of the Lake of Hali? The Cyborg?" He paused once more, his voice dropping to a dark whisper. "The King in Yellow? You know nothing of this?"

Shinji had crawled backwards as far as he could in an attempt to put distance between himself and this madman. What on earth was he talking about? He had never heard of a Lake of Hali, and the only King he knew of was King Westcraft. He certainly had never heard of him having a fondness for the color yellow before. And what was a shoggoth? Was that even a real word?

The man, seeing the fear in the boy's eyes, sighed. "I'm sure that there is a good reason for you to not know of any of this. You said you were going to a school, yes? Tell me, is this possibly the Academy of GERHIN? Ah, don't say anything. I see it in your face. Yes, well, trust me on this, lord. Do not blindly accept everything that they tell you. Your parents were betrayed by someone there, I do not know who. All your father's servants seek even now that traitor, may he be thrice dammed. Keep an open mind. Your father served with them, and counted them as a great ally, GERHIN. But he kept things from them even so. He was far greater than they ever knew, and he did not chain himself to the petty moralities they hold so dear. Your father was about your age when Impact occurred, and from the ashes of the world that was he made himself into one of the most powerful men in the world. He did not accomplish this feat by blindly accepting everything they offered him."

Shinji nodded, his eyes wide. Just what was he getting into? This man knows about GERHIN, and he knew his father's name without being told. And he said that he looked like his mother, something that he had heard before. What was going on?

The man stood, stretching. "I see that I have deeply troubled you with my words. Trust me, this was not my intent. I will take my leave of you, but if you have questions you wish to ask of me, I will be in the cabin next door." He stopped at the door. "I am not going onto Tokyo-3, but I will ensure that you get on the next train unhindered by any of these petty muggles." He practially sneered the last word out, before turning and leaving. Shinji stared at the door in disbelief.

_What is going on here? Who are these people, and what do they want? What's a muggle? Is it a curse word or something? What wasn't I told about my parents. What about my mom? All he's done is go on and on about my dad. Why didn't Aunt and Uncle tell me about any of this? _

His thoughts were interrupted as the train jerked suddenly, and he went flying in the cabin as the train car was thrown up in the air as the train derailed. Slamming into the wall, he rolled down to the ceiling, only to be thrown back up as the car kept lurching about. He heard the scream of abused metal being torn and ripped, and then his own screams as his his arm broke. The screams of others joined in with the general cacophony, and then he heard a strange buzzing noise, like a thousand bees. He heard the voice of the scarred man, whose name he had never gotten, screaming some nonsense, and the last thing he saw before he blacked out was a bright, multicolored light exploding from the man's hands as he stood over him.

Einz, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Shinji groaned. His head hurt, no, his head felt like someone wearing steel toed boots had tap danced on it. He tried to look around, but wherever it was he was at was completely dark.

Oddly enough, while one might think that the accumulated strangeness of the going-ons he had been subjected to would reduce the introverted and shy boy into a quivering, whimpering wreck, he felt nothing more strongly than annoyance. This realization came as a shock to him.

_What is wrong with me? I should have wet myself by now. Am I in a hospital? _He found that he could sit up, and while the movement did horrors for his throbbing head, he found that his right arm as tied off in a sling to his chest. It hurt less than his head. _I don't think hospital rooms are completely dark like this. The ones Aunt and Uncle were in weren't. What happened back there? Did the train crash? What was that noise? What did that guy do?_

Carefully, he felt for the edge of what he supposed was a bed and reached with his legs for the ground. With his uninjured hand held in front of him, he started feeling around for a light switch, or a door. _This is insane. If this is a hospital, it's got to be the worst one in the world. I mean, who leaves someone in a completely dark room? I can't even see my hand._

He found a door knob, and twisted it. It turned silently under his hand, and he was rewarded with a hallway light by soft blue light, lined with windowless doors like the one he had just opened. Looking down, he saw he was still dressed in his clothes, with the sleeve of the broken arm cut away, a cast and sling on it. He decided to go look for a nurse or someone else.

_This is ridiculous. They left me in my clothes? They couldn't put me in a hospital gown? Isn't that what hospitals normally do?_

After what felt like forever, he came to an elevator. This place seemed very quiet, and even when he tried making noise by stomping his feet on the tile floor, no sound was made. When he had called out for anyone, his voice sounded normal enough.

Entering the elevator and pressing the button for the lobby, he found that the elevator was as soundless as the hallway. There was no ding when the doors opened or closed, no hum of machinery. When the doors opened out on the lobby, he stared in confusion, before stepping out, the doors closing behind him as silently as ever.

The place looked abandoned. There was dust and grime everywhere, and several dirty and stained mattresses were scattered about. This place looked like it was home to several homeless people, not a hospital.

Hearing the first sounds that didn't orginante from himself, he walked around the corner and came face to face with a fat, bald man, wearing a mish-mash of obviously scavenged clothes, who glistened with a sheen of sweat. The man's eyes widened as he saw the boy.

"Oh, oh my. You're awake! We didn't know when you would awaken from your slumber, lord." Shinji cringed at the title.

_Not more of these guys, please!_ His silent prayer went unheeded as the fat man continued on.

"When Aoba brought you here, he of course told us about you. You have nothing to fear. When the Migo attacked your conveyance, Aoba managed to fight them off and bring you here. This is a safe haven. It is not nearly so grand as what we have stayed in, but it is safe. We, ahh, have a way of dealing with trespassers here."

Shinji, deciding that all of this was just a massively long and convoluted dream he was having, decided to just go with the flow. He would wake up soon enough in his bed at home, make breakfast, go to his teacher's house, and go on as he had each day prior.

"Where is here, exactly? I need to go to Tokyo-3. I have to go the school, you see." Shinji looked around for a chair that looked slightly clean to sit down in, and not finding one, elected to remain standing.

"Ah, you are at one of the hidden towns, secreted by magic from the eyes of the muggles." Shinji noted the word again, although the man said it with non of the passion the scarred man had.

"You said that Aoba brought me here? Who is he? Also, I'm sorry, but what's your name?" Shinji decided to try a different track of questioning. "What happened on the train?"

The man smiled, his mouth stretching in a way that it really shouldn't, causing Shinji's stomach to twist a little. "You are so kind, to apologise for not knowing things. It is not your fault, lord, but Aoba was right, you are your father's son. Aoba is the man you meet on the train, the man with the scars on his face. He served your father, like we did. It is our greatest shame, what happened to him.

But my name, well, he said that you knew nothing of the nature of the world. It is not our place to instruct you, young lord, but your name, your real name, the title that is how you see yourself, it is not something that you should just give to anyone, or anything. Names have power, and can be used against you. But for you, my lord I will gladly give you my name, even if you were able to say it properly." At this, he began to make a strange piping and trilling sound, which Shinji knew he never would be able to replicate.

"That's your name? Umm... what should I call you then?"

The man-thing smiled again. "So smart, to ask for another title. Men call me Hoja. I am the leader of our little conclave here. As for what happened on the train, a group of Migo attacked. They were after a little something that Aoba had picked up for his current master, but once they saw you they knew who you were. Your father was a great enemy of the Migo, and it seems that since he is gone, they have transferred the enmity to you."

Watching the boy's face as interest and disbelief play on it, he motioned him to follow. "Come, we have prepared food for you. While you will have many who will gladly and proudly pledge their allegiance to you, you will find that just as many will hold the grudge they held against your father against you. Mighty and terrible are the things that your father stood against, and mighty and terrible are the things that he did against them. These things do not forget, Master Ikari. They do not forget, and they do not forgive. Once word spreads that you are picking up the mantle of your father, the battle will be joined once again. Already I have sent words to other covens. Through the black and the empyrean word spreads. You can count on the Shoggoth. We will stand with you as we did your father." He turned his head, noticing that Shinji had stopped following him and was staring at him in open mouthed horror.

"Battle? Picking up my father's mantle? What do you mean? I was just going to go to school at Tokyo-3. I don't understand..." _Just what did my father DO?_

The man only smiled kindly. "I know it's all a lot to take in. I'm sure they'll be able to explain it much better than I. We don't interact very much with people, sorcerers or otherwise. But put it out of your mind! Come, and eat. In the morning a guide will arrive to take you to the Ruined City. From there, the Ghouls will take you to Mishima. Once there, you will be able to take a train to Tokyo-3."

Shinji still just stood there, staring. "Gh..ghouls? Like... zombies? What?" This may be just a dream, but why on earth would he want to go someplace where there were zombies?

Hoja threw his hands up, trying to soothe the frighted boy. "No, No, it's not like that. They're not dead. They're just as alive as you or me." He looked at the young lord appraising. _He may be his father's son, but he truly knows nothing. What were they thinking? He should have grown up instructed from birth about the greatness of his family line. We would have done it, and gladly._

"Eh, just don't sample their cuisine. We'll pack you food to last you until you reach Mishima."

Shinji took a few tentative steps, before moving to Hoja's side. "Where is Aoba?"

He had to leave. He had to deliver his package, and he went to begin spreading word. You will do great things, Young Master. Great things indeed."

"Umm.. OK." Shinji was silent for a minute as they entered what was obviously the hospital's cafeteria. "Hoja, you and Aoba have talked a lot about my father, but almost nothing about my mom. If he was some great leader, what about her?"

Hoja sighed. He had been dreading this question since Aoba had told him that the boy knew nothing about his parents. Madness and insanity went hand in hand with the powers that the human mages wielded, but it wasn't comforting to hear that one's mother had been a crazed psychopath. He knew enough about humans to know that.

"Well, she was **very** talented. She could walk in the dream-lands effortlessly, it seemed, and to her, the Hounds of Tindalos acted as puppies. She had mastered the art of astral projection at a very young age, the art of separating her soul from her body. Not just her mind, as when one sleeps to enter the Dream-lands, but full on separation. Those were her greatest talents. She was skilled with some elemental spells, but had no head for alchemy or some of the more so called intellectual skill sets. This isn't to say that she wasn't smart, by human reckoning she was very intelligent. She had no patience for it though. As a woman, she was full of love and full of life. She always had a kind word to say about everyone she met."

He sighed deeply, motioning for Shinji to sit at the table while he disappeared into the back room. When he returned, he held a tray with soup, toast and milk. Setting down before the boy, he also sat.

"However, the powers that mages hold have a price. It's a very delicate dance you see, with the more powerful magics. The smaller spells, and even most of the medium-powered incantations hold no danger to your psyche, but the most powerful, the greatest magic that you can hold, well, it takes it's toll on your mind. Your mother, well, she was mad. Not violently, but still she was touched in the head. The last battle she had fought in had cost her dearly. That was why after the war was over, your father disappeared from public view, keeping in contact only with his most trusted allies from the wars. He wanted to spend the rest of their lives in quiet, tending to her, and when you were born, to you."

Shinji ate mechanically, absorbing all the information. _Maybe I should write this down and see what Dr. Hokkada's book on dreams and the psyche says when I wake up. This is some weird shit._

"It happened almost a year after you were born. Somehow, He Who Must Not Be Named, the one who had initiated Impact, had come back out of hiding. What's more, he somehow found out where your father was. Someone had betrayed him to his greatest enemy. He showed up, killed your father and your mother, and then, when he tried to kill you, something happened." He took a deep breath before continuing. "Word is that they found you in a circle of ash fifty feet in diameter. A great cross of fire had burned in the sky, and all seeing stones that people had been using at the time Him burning, wreathed in flames, screaming and turning to ash. Whatever he tried to do to you, well, something went horribly wrong. You disappeared, dropped out of sight. Nobody had even really known who you were, until it had been discovered at where He had met his demise. All anyone knew was that the son of Ikari had killed He Who Must Not Be Named."

Shinji pushed the empty tray away from him and sat back in his chair. "Hoja, I was wondering... you keep talking about his guy. Who was he?"

"It's not my place to say, but the Master of the Lake of Hali was perhaps one of the greatest threats to this world. He was a vile, totally evil being of immense power. His name is not to be mentioned, even now, in his death. Death is not always as permanent as we might wish, and if he were to return, well it would be disastrous. He tried to bring your father in as a protege of his as a young man, but your father refused his evil, and chose to stand against him. While not all of the allies and servants of your father may be considered to be good as man understands the term, your father accepted them under his banner in wars against the forces of total darkness. But that is a story for another time. You must rest more, my lord, to regain your strength. The guide will be here in morning. I am sure that he will gladly regale you with the Ghoul's tales of your father."

"Hoja, you know you don't need to call me lord or anything. It's ok." Shinji replied sleepily. He yawned. He was tired.

The fat man smiled, smaller than before. "So kind to us, we who failed your father." He picked the sleeping boy up, as four more arms exited from underneath his coat to cradle him gently. "So kind, like your mother. It is sad, perhaps, that you will know nothing but war and pain in the years to come. If I could take that burden from you, I would. If only you had been given to us to safeguard. You would never have wanted for anything. Safe, for all time."

Depositing the sleeper in a bed in another room on the first floor, one with lights, he walked into the room next to it. In it was a pit, filled with gelatinous beings.

"Sing him lullabies to ease his sleep. Let him sleep, free from troubling dreams." As he turned to leave, a soft, otherworldly piping filled the air as the shoggoths began to sing to the son of Ikari.

Einz, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

"You promised, Hoja. You Promised Us." The man that was not a man crossed his arms as glared at the shoggoth. "You said that one of us could take him to the Ruined City, and then to Mishima. I am here to take him."

Hoja glared at the ghoul in return, the sheen glistening on his head increasing as he fought to keep the shape of a man. "I'm just saying maybe that one of us should go with him too. He is precious to us. We failed his father, and we must not fail him as well."

The ghoul threw his arms up in the air in frustration. "You are not the only ones to have failed the Master, Hoja. We owe a debt as well. Let us begin to repay it, by taking him to GERHIN. We're not stupid. We won't tell him what it is we eat, and we won't give him our food. We may look like dogs, but we are not!"

To be sure, the distinctly canine looking face, with the pointed ears and bloodshot eyes were in odd contrast to the shabby looking suit it's owner wore. He might have been a recently homeless buisness man, who had spent a few nights sleeping in an alley, if not for the face, and the sharp, claw-like fingers.

"Richard, I'm just saying that the boy doesn't know what's going on. He knew nothing of his lineage. Aoba told me that he though his father was a farmer, by the Idiot God! I'm just thinking that perhaps throwing him into your company all of a sudden might me more of a shock than he can take. Aoba said that the boy seemed very shy."

Richard sneered. "Aoba. That fool. He should have alerted someone the moment he realised who the boy was. It's only providence that made them share a train compartment in the first place. Where is he now? Why is he not here, to serve as the boy's manservant, as he did his father?"

Hoja sighed, trying to remain calm. There was no reasoning with ghouls it seemed, sometimes. Once they had ahold of a notion or idea they held onto it and wouldn't let it go. "He went to go spread the word to the others. To rally the troops, to have them make preparations for battle. I know not when it will come, but the Migo know of his existence now. The remaining followers of He Who Must Not Be Named will seek him out. The Flying Polyps. The millions of cults out there, who would take him for their own. Battle is coming, make no mistake. If we are to be victorious, if he is to continue to be the Boy Who Lived, his allies must be ready, whenever the time comes."

Richard started to pace back and forth, his long arms swinging in time with his odd gait. "Already the Ruined City flies the Black Banner. His father's flag was risen from half-mast an hour after your messenger arrived. Already we have sent out word to the other cities. Charagon himself will meet the Master on bended knee when we arrive."

Hoja's mouth dropped at this news. _The black banner? Charagon awaits the boy on his knees? _"Charagon awaits the boy himself? He's not planning anything stupid is he? They do know that it could be years before the call to arms is sent out, yes?"

The ghoul snorted. "Of course he's planning something stupid. It took the entire council to keep him from leading an attack on the Migo compound in the Sanuki Mountains. He still might order the attack anyway, to pay them back for their perfidy of attacking the Master."

"That's another thing, Richard. The boy doesn't like be called that. He's uncomfortable with it. He's grown up sheltered from everything. Just call him by his name, I guess."

The ghoul stared at the shoggoth. "Just call him by his name? Are you mad? They'll have my head off at the shoulders in the City if I ever did that. I can't just address him like we're old friends."

"See? This is why I want to send someone with you. Hotaru could run interference between him and the... formality of the City. It's not much to send her along with him. It'll be safe enough."

The ghoul worked his mouth, twisting his jaw around like he was actually trying to chew on the idea. "It might be OK. Hotaru knows the City. She won't cause a fuss. When will the... boy... be ready to leave?"

Hoja shrugged. "We'll feed him as soon as he wakes up, and then you can be off. He's had a traumatic few days. Letting him sleep in a little won't hurt."

"Fine. It's a two day walk to the City the way we'll go. I was going to take the tunnels, but if Hotaru is coming, we'll take the above ground trail. I'll range ahead a little, and they can follow. It's good to spend some time on the surface."

Hoja smiled, glad that everything was settled. "Good, I'll let her know to be ready. She's in the kitchen preparing his breakfast." He waddled off towards the cafeteria, leaving the ghoul alone.

Richard flopped down into one of the chairs, not having Shinji's distaste for the moldy and stained upholstery. Grabbing one of the ancient magazines from the table, he began to read about how to cook a perfect holiday meal.

A few moments later, his reading was interrupted by a door opening, and a young man walking out, rubbing at his eyes with his good arm. Almost immediately, Richard rose from the chair, and bent down on both knees before the shocked boy.

"My Lord, I am called Richard Hauser. I am from the Ruined City to act as your guide to it, and from there to Mashima. I did not have the honor of knowing your father, but I served under him in the wars. On behalf of the city I pledge our allegiance to you. What is your first command?"

Shinji blinked. He had been disappointed that when he woke up, it was in a shabby hospital room and not his room back home, and that his arm was still broken. Things kept seeming more and more real, and not the figments of a really horrible nightmare.

"Umm... can you not call me lord or anything? I'm not really all that important or anything. I mean, I know everyone has been telling me about my dad, but I'm not him."

Richard rose from his place of supplication. "Very well. Just know that there are those who will refuse to not call you by your rightful title. We place great importance on one's place in the hierarchy in the Ruined City."

Shinji tried not to stare at the man's face or hands. "Are.. are you a ghoul?"

Richard smiled, trying to keep from showing the mouthfull of sharp teeth his flat lips hid from view. "Yes, I am a ghoul. The Ruined City is a city of Ghouls, one of the largest in the world. Don't worry, we're not zombies. I am very much alive. I need air, food, and a place to sleep like any other living thing. You have nothing to fear from any ghoul. Any and all will die for you, if needed."

A sharp cough brought both ghoul and boy's attention to the door of the cafeteria, where a fat woman, also bald like Hoja was, similarly covered with sweat, stood. "Now since we're introducing ourselves, my name is Hotaru, and I'll be going with you as far as Mishima, Shinji. Now, you should eat something, and we'll leave."

Shinji and Richard followed her to a table with food for one set out on it. He looked at his two companions. "Aren't you going to eat?"

Both looked at each other somewhat uncomfortably. Richard spoke up first. "I had ate shortly before getting here. I'm good."

Hotaru followed that up, with a more generic disclaimer. "We shoggoths eat different things from humans Shinji. It's not really good table conversation."

"Oh." Shinji fell to eating his food, as Richard waited uncomfortably in the silence. "Hotaru, just what is a shoggoth?"

She smiled at the boy. "Shoggoths are shape-shifters. We can form any number of appendages to help up work, and some of us can take the shape of humans, like me and Hoja. It's very hard, and not all of us can do it."

"OK." He reusmed eating the food. Things were definitely weird.

Silence reigned for the rest of the meal, until he pushed the now empty tray away.

Hoja appeared, with a large backpack, which he haded to Hotaru. "This is enough food to last you a few days. Shinji, it has been an honour to have you here. I wish you well. I know that this is all a lot to take in at once."

Shinji, not having anything to say to that, merely nodded. He was still deep in thought as the seemingly empty town disappeared behind them as the trio made their way into the forest.


	4. Chapter 4

See Chapter 1 for Disclaimer.

Something screamed out in the dark shadows of the forest, and it took all of his will to ensure that he didn't scream in return. Shinji peered out from his hiding place in a small depression next to the trunk of some massive tree he didn't know the name of, praying to whatever god that might be listening for deliverance into safety. His uninjured hand clutched the bag that Richard had given him before he had left, if only to occupy his mind with the small task of ensuring that he still had it. It had been days since he had last seen either Richard or Hotaru.

The savage, eerie and **hungry** scream sounded again, echoing through the woods. Richard's instructions had been simple enough, before he had left to chase off... whatever it was that had been following them. Travel only during the day, travel south, hide during the night, don't lose the bag, and don't talk to strangers.

Hotaru's instructions when she had left him to do... whatever it was she was going to do... (he silently cursed their inexplicable need for secrecy and not telling him things) had been even simpler.

Run, and stop only at night to hide.

He wasn't even sure where he was anymore. After a few hours into the walk to the Ruined City, both of his escorts had started eying the woods and each other strangely. Then, Richard had thrust his bag into Shinji's arms, told them what to do, and headed off into the woods as Hotaru guided him south from the westwardly direction that they had been going in.

Thirty minutes after Richard had left, the screaming had started. Periodically, a strange buzzing sound also could be heard, at the very edges of his hearing.

Hotaru simply **grew** more arms, picked him up as easily as he might a small housecat, and then began moving quickly through the woods. They had spent the first night hiding in a cave along a river. They rose with the morning sun, and continued their flight south, until what he figured was about midday, when she put him down, told him to run, and headed back the direction they had come from.

That had been five days ago.

_I'm not even sure if I'm going in the right direction anymore. _He was tired, cold and upset. No longer could he hide behind the faint possibility that this was all some sort of messed up dream, no longer could he simply pretend that at any moment he was going to wake up in his bed back home, yawn, and forget about all of this during the normal course of his normal, comfortable life. He wasn't a very imaginative boy, and if you had asked him to imagine up something for a story, he might have been able to weave a story about a farmer who found a chest of gold and gems in his fields on day. He certainly wouldn't have been able to come up with a tale involving him running through a forest to an unknown destination, and he knew this.

_What is making that sound?_ He grimaced, trying to think of what could produce that bowel freezing , blood curdling cry. _You know what? I don't think that I want to know._

His eyes widened as he saw movement in the shadows. Something came shuffling along, making wet, disgusting snuffling sounds as it sniffed at the air and ground. His stomach clenched as it moved in ways he couldn't even begin to describe the wrongness of, rearing it's head and screaming again, spittle flying everywhere. He gagged as he caught the smell of it, reeking of garbage that had been left out far too long. The thing shuffled over, closer to his hiding spot, and he froze, unable to shut his eyes as it came closer. Had he the desire to, he could reach out and touch the thing's wet, matted hair. He had no such desire.

It was at this point, to his growing horror and terror, that the trunk of the tree shifted slightly, and with a slight groan, moved up and then down atop the screaming monstrosity.

Shinji flipped over onto his back, staring up at the tree, which went on up into the darkness, and it was now that he noticed that it joined with two other trees further up, and that it's branches didn't really move with the wind, or like branches at all.

A great mouth appeared in the side of the new, much larger creature, and a deep, rumbling sound that seemed to be at once a moan and a purr issued forth. Shinji, at this point loosing what little control he had left, did the only sensible thing that one could do in such a position, and began to scream mindlessly as he tried to scramble away from the towering beast.

Fire exploded all around him, and the tree-thing screeched and turned to trample off into the forest with a speed not expected of something that big. On the edges of his awareness he could hear people shouting, but he could not bring himself to stop screaming, as people-sized shapes appeared around him, fire and lightning issuing forth from their hands, pointed in all directions. One of the robed figures stopped in front of him, grabbing him by the shoulders, his mouth moving like he was talking, but Shinji couldn't hear what he was saying.

Makato shot a glance from the screaming boy in front of him to his friend and fellow GERHIN staff member, Branden, who merely shrugged before turning to continue the mages' assault on the dark forest and the darker horrors that hid within it.

Makato, looking around to see if anyone was watching him, and seeing that none were, slugged the boy in the head as hard as he could, catching the knocked out teenager before he hit the ground.

Pulling a small sphere that glowed with a cold, otherworldly light, he shouted to the other men and women in the woods. "I've got the boy, I'm leaving!" Not waiting for any replies, he smashed the ball on the ground at his feet, hugging Shinji's comatose form close as blue smoke and green fire shot up around them, leaving nothing but a small circle of fine white ash behind.

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Shinji opened his eyes slowly and cautiously, looking at a most unfamiliar ceiling. This ceiling was no normal hospital ceiling, but rather a stone affair, but somehow had florescent lights installed in it. Still lying down, he narrowed his eyes. _How does that even work? _He slowly propped himself up with his good arm, noting the presence of both a new sling on his arm, and of a hospital gown. The rest of the room seemed to be made of stone, like the ceiling, but also had modern day electrical outlets and heating vents installed. His confusion began to grow. He looked at the beeping medical equipment, and poked at it experimentally to see if it really was there.

_How did I get here? What is this place?_ Spying a dark brown robe on the back of a chair, he swung his legs out of the bed, when the door opened and a woman with blond hair and glasses walked in.

"Ah, ah, noo! You stay in bed young man!" She grinned at him as he blushed in embarrassment, while he silently cursed whatever it was about him that made him turn red at the drop of a hat. The woman pulled some little gadget from the pocket of her lab-coat, and grabbed him by the head and looked through it into his left eye, and then his right, all the while humming something under her breath. Apparently satisfied with what she saw or didn't see in his eyes, she stuck another part of the gadget in his ear for a moment, and then pulled it out, looking at a display.

"Hmmm... Well, I've got good news and I've got bad news. What do you want first?" She sat down in the chair, leaning back and watching him closely.

Shinji stared at her, not sure what to say. "Ummm... good news?"

"You don't sound very certain of that. You sure you want the good news first, or do you really want the bad news?"

_What? Is she insane?_

"Um.. I want the good news first."

She yawned, stretching her arms above her head. "OK, that's better, but not great. You need to be more decisive, more forceful with your will, kiddo. But anyhow, the good news is that you seem to be perfectly healthy, minus that arm." She pointed to the arm in it's sling as she spoke, as if it wasn't obvious about what she was talking about. "You don't show any signs of mental contamination, and should make a full recovery! Isn't that nice?" Her voice was bubbly and cheerful, but it seemed forced.

Slowly, trying not to be obvious about it, Shinji edged as far back on the bed as he could, trying to put as much space between him and this person he wasn't sure was all there in the head. "What's the bad news?"

Smiling in amusement at the teenager trying to scoot away from her, Ritsuko stretched again. "The bad news is that it's midnight, so you won't be getting any food for about seven hours." She winked at him. "Unless you can sweet talk me into getting you a snack."

Confusion now played openly across Shinji's face, much to the glee of the blond doctor. _Oh, this is too easy. He's like a little lost lamb. _"Do you want anything to eat? I can magic something up for you, if you want."

_It has been a while since I had anything to eat. Anything real, anyways. I'm not sure those berries counted for much. _"Um... you don't have too... if it's a bother or anything..." He was cut off by his rebellious stomach, which wanted to be a bother because it wanted real food, and not scavenged wild berries that may or may not have been poisonous and hallucinogenic.

She laughed as he turned red again, and stood. "I'll be right back then, so don't go anywhere. My name's Ritsuko, by the way." She disappeared out the door, leaving him to his own devices, for the time being.

Jumping out of bed, he grabbed the robe, throwing it on around his arm. Moving to the small window, he looked out to see that he has on an upper floor of a **castle**, of all things, overlooking a river, a lake, a small town and a large forest, that stretched out into the dark. He could see no moon or stars, but there were no clouds that he could see either. Just... darkness that went on forever.

_Where am I? I don't ever remember hearing about a giant castle like this anywhere in Tokyo-3! This makes no sense!_

He turned back to face the door as Ritsuko came back in, carrying a tray with a bowel of soup and a mug that he hoped held tea.

"Ah! Get back in bed young man! The last thing I need is for you to slip and hurt yourself. Then what will I tell the headmaster?" She set the tray down on a stand, and crossed her arms. "You're going to stay in here until I hear different, got it?"

"Ss..sorry." He climbed back onto the bed, and she put the tray onto his lap.

"Now, I must say you had all of us worried there for a little bit. Seriously, what on earth prompted you to go off into the woods after that crash? You should have stayed put and waited for the emergency rescue crews. You're luckier than you know that we found you when we did." She grimaced at some thought that she obviously didn't want to share. "By all rights we shouldn't have been able to find you." She pointed a finger at him. "Just remember that, OK?"

Shinji, still tired, and still upset at how his week had gone, and how his life seemed to generally be in the toilet, snapped back at her, surprising both her and himself. "It's not my fault that the My-go attacked the train, or that Aoba took me to the Shoggoths! I was knocked out at the time!"

Ritsuko's smile dropped instantly. "Aoba! Shoggoths!" She grabbed Shinji by the shoulders, drawing close to him. "What did this Aoba look like? Did he have scars on his face? On his right cheek?"

Dumbfounded, Shinji could only nod.

Ritsuko rose, dropping him back onto the bed. "You stay here. I'll be back." All warmth was gone from her voice, after she left, he could hear the echos of her footsteps as she ran down the corridor.

Staring at the door, feeling extremely put upon, Shinji gulped down the soup and tea as fast as he could, and then poked his head out the door, looking to see if there was anyone watching.

The corridor was unlike any other hospital he had seen, with numerous paintings lining both sides of the hallway, and while he couldn't see anybody, he was unable to shake the feeling that someone was watching him. Pushing out into the hall, he started down in the opposite direction the blond had taken.

_This is insane. I'm going to find real clothes, and then get out of here and find the police. What type of place is this?_

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Kozo looked up from his book as Ritsuko burst into the room. "Ah, I take it that he's awake now?" He rose, putting the book on divinations and scrying down. "Has he said-"

"He said that Aoba took him to the Shoggoths!" Ritsuko gasped out in between breaths. "I asked him why he didn't stay at the crash site, and he said that Aoba took him to the Shoggoths!"

The headmaster recoiled, as if bitten by a serpent. "Aoba? Are you certain?"

"The man had the scars on his face! The boy confirmed it!"

"This is not good. Where is Shinji now?"

"I left him in the room. I came here directly."

"Good. I need to talk to him, now more than ever."

When the two got back to the hospital wing, they found Naoko waiting for them. "Where is the boy? When I got here, the room was empty."

Kozo cursed, startling both Akagi women. "It seems that he's fled. He met Aoba on the train, Naoko."

Naoko turned white, shuddering with fear and revulsion. "Aoba? What are the odds of that, do you think?"

"Astronomical. He apparently took the boy to meet the Shoggoths."

"No wonder he was running around in the woods. What do you think they wanted?"

"They all but worshiped his father. Aoba was Gendo's right hand man, up until he betrayed him. Do you think he was trying to recruit him?"

"But to what end? What would Aoba gain by taking him to the Shoggoths? They surely have no love for him. They would want the boy, no doubt, but they would most certainly kill Aoba on site."

"Something more is going on here. A hidden hand is moving pieces around, and we're not seeing the big picture."

Naoko shook her head. "We need to find the boy and find out all what happened. Standing here trying to unravel this by making wild guesses isn't going to net us the answers we need."

Ritsuko spoke up now, throwing in her thoughts. "It's not like he can get far. Even if he gets out of the castle, he still won't know what to do to get away from here."

Naoko sighed. "That is no reason to let the poor boy wander around. He's had some major shocks. He's lost and alone in a strange place, which apparently is at least the second of strange places that he's been in this week."

One of the oil paintings, showing an older gentleman dressed like he came out of one of Shakespeare's plays rolled his eyes. "You know, you could have just asked one of us where he's at. I don't know why you people always forget that we're hanging up everywhere and can see just about anything."

Kozo turned to the painting. "We don't ask because your lot typically mangles the truth, like most faeries. Time is of the essence here, and I do not have time to decipher your half-truths."

The painted man shook his head. "Riddling and puzzles have long since gone out of mortal fashion, it seems. Even amongst you longer lived ones." He sniffed, as if offended. "But, I suppose that I can be grossly blunt this time. The lad is currently in the main dining hall."

"Thank you." Kozo knew that it was important to thank the faeries when they gave help, solicited or not, and useful or not. Even trapped inside the paintings as this one was, he could still cause some trouble.

The three drew together, as Kozo teleported them just outside the dining hall. They entered, and saw Shinji at the far end, trying to open a door, which unfortunately for him, had been jammed for quite some time and no one had gotten around to fixing just yet.

"Mr. Ikari! Please, hold on!"

Shinji, tired and frustrated, turned to the three adults approaching cautiously. "Why? Are you going to turn into some huge thing and try to eat me?"

Kozo sighed. "No, no. Nothing at all like that. My name is Kozo Fuyutsuki. I am the headmaster here at the Academy."

Shinji blinked, his jaw dropping. "This is the school? This is in Tokyo-3? No way, that's not possible. I think I'd know if there was some huge English castle sitting there, and plus, Tokyo-3 is on the coast, not a river. I didn't see any city outside either."

The Headmaster smiled. "Scottish, actually."

Shinji's look of confusion set the others to chuckling as he shook his head. "What?"

"This castle is actually Scottish in origin, not English. But, come with us to my office and I'll explain everything and show you. It's quite all right, you're safe here. You don't need to worry about anything at the moment. We'll have some tea, and discuss matters."

Shinji watched the older woman frown. "As long as it's not chai."

Kozo rolled his eyes. "It's Earl Grey tonight, actually."

"Well, that's better then. A much more sensible selection."

Shinji had had enough of this. "Is everyone outside of Wessex-5 insane or some sort of creature? I mean, seriously, at this point I think I'd rather want to go live in the ruins of my Uncle's house."

"That statement is more true than you know, my boy. You are a member of two worlds, Shinji Ikari, two worlds that are both entirely separate and at the same time enter-twined closer together than the threads of that robe you're wearing. But this is not the place to discuss such things. Let us retire to my office, and we can all sit down, enjoy some tea while we talk."

Shinji, at this point still uncertain as to what he really wanted to do, stood still, one hand still on the door. His stomach, however, was unsatisfied with the paltry amount of food he had partaken of in the hospital room, growled loudly, eliciting a soft chuckle from the blond. "I can leave whenever I want too, right? I don't have to stay here if I don't want too."

"If you decide that you do not wish to remain at the Academy, I will understand. We will escort you back to your home, as well."

"OK."

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Shinji looked around the office. The place... was strange, to say the least. It was huge, had several fireplaces, a massive desk, and all the manner of weird looking curios and objects cluttered around, and several strange symbols inlaid into the stone floor in spots.

Ritsuko handed him a cup of fine china, much fancier than he had been expecting, and settled in next to him on the couch he had sat down on.

"Now, my name is Kozo Fuyutsuki, and I am the Headmaster of the Academy of GEHIRN. The woman sitting next to you is Ritsuko Akagi, one of our staff here, and the woman sitting in the chair over there is Naoko Akagi, her mother, and another staff member, who also happens to be the Deputy Headmaster. You are Shinji Ikari, the son of Gendo and Yui Ikari."

Shinji nodded, sipping his tea.

"Now, the world you know is a normal, if complex one. There are superpowers who decide world policy, who fight with each other over resources in these troubled times after Second Impact and the Impact Wars. Your life is simple, you have lived in Wessex-5 for as long as you can remember, with your Aunt and Uncle. You go to school, you hang out with your friends, you have a job you work for spending cash. The sun rises in the east, and while it never sets on the Empire, it goes down in the west at night. The earth revolves around the sun, and the solar system is on one of the spiral arms of the galaxy."

Kozo paused, partially for dramatic effect, and also to drink some of his own tea.

"Now, what you don't know is the truth: Things are not as they might seem. At the edges of mankind's civilization, there lies ancient, primal things. Things that wait in the dark bowers and forgotten corners of man's domain. Things that were here before, some things that still are, and the things that will be again. Things, old and alien, as far removed from us as we are from ants. Then, there are the lesser beings, mere aliens, but make no mistake, for they are not simply men with green skin; they are alien. Their motives and the things that drive them are strange to us at best, incomprehensible at worst. This is why we call them the Strangers, the Outsiders. But not all is darkness, for there is light, and as long as Man exists, there is hope."

Ritsuko nudged Shinji with her elbow. "This is the good part of his speech, coming up." She whispered conspiratorially into his ear, trying not to laugh as he turned red.

Naoko rolled her eyes. "Please, dear, enough. Of all the bad habits you could have picked up from her, this one-"

Sighing heavily, Kozo rubbed his forehead. "If I may continue?" Not waiting for a response, he moved back to his 'speech'. "This secret world is also the world of Magic, and of the Mages. Real magic, spelled M-A-G-I-C, no Ks, no Ys, just like it's spelled by the rest of the literate adult world. The otherworldly interlopers are a nuisance, yes, and there are battles and indeed, sometimes wars that must be fought against them to ensure Mankind's survival, but they are infrequent. But we must keep the old traditions alive, to pass the knowledge on, and so, many, many, many years ago, four prominent Mages came together to create a school of learning, nestled away in the mountains of ancient Scotland. They were not the first ones to do so, but the school they founded came to be one of the most successful. The leader of this band of mages, their names lost to the ages long ago, hailed from what would become known as Bavaria, in Germany. He named the school 'The School of the Inner Mind', but as time passed, the name was shortened to 'The Academy of GEHIRN'. Don't ask me why, I wasn't around for it. I may be old, but I'm not that old."

"At any rate, I'm sure you're wondering just how you fit into all of this. Well, it's a sad tale, but it is also the truth, and your birthright. You are the son of Gendo and Yui Ikari, yes, but they were no simple farmers. Your mother was an accomplished Mage and Witch, don't worry, you'll learn about the distinctions later, and your father, well, your father was a Wizard of no small renown. He was a Wizard and a Battle Mage both, skilled in the arts of the will and the word. Gendo Rokobungi perhaps is one of the main reasons that Mankind persists today."

Shinji stared at the old man, certain that he must be in some coma, and this past week was all nothing but drug induced nightmares. _This is all just a side effect of the drugs. That's all. I'm not actually sitting in a Scottish castle that's somehow sitting in Tokyo-3, drinking tea with a man who's telling me that my parents were magicians. That's it. It's all just a coma dream._

Naoko sighed, watching the boy's inner thoughts play across his face. "Look, Shinji, it's all true. Here, watch my hands." Once sure that the boy's attention was fixed on her hands, she summoned a small floating ball of blue fire.

A small gurgle escaped from Shinji's mouth, which was clamped shut. Ritsuko took the tea cup from his violently shaking hand as her mother set the ball up in the air, and called forth several others of different colors and set them up next to the first, and set them to slowly rotate around her head.

"Magic exists, Shinji, and people, certain people that is, can make use of it. There are different forms of, but it's all magic in one way or another. And the thing about magic, well, the thing is that it normally runs in the family. Your mother's family, the Ikaris, they hail from a long line of mages. Your father, however, does not. It jumps around sometimes, and we don't know why."

Slowly, Shinji forced his arm to stop shaking, his eyes never leaving the floating balls of flame. "Can... can I do magic?" His voice quavered, and his query was almost a whisper.

Kozo leaned in, putting a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder. "Yes. You perhaps have done stronger magic already in your life than many a mage has done after centuries of practice and study."

"What do you mean? I haven't done anything magical in my life."

Sighing, the elderly headmaster leaned back into his chair. "You have, but you do not remember it, for you were a small child, a baby, at the time. What can you tell me about the event that is known as Second Impact?"

_Second Impact? What does that have to do with me? I wasn't even born then!_ "Second Impact refers to the cataclysm that shattered the world that was, forever altering the face of the earth physically, and then with the Impact Wars, politically and ethnically." Shinji recited the lines that his instructor had drilled into him since the beginning of his education. "No one is certain as to what happened, but it is known that the Event took place in Antarctica. No one explanation can be found that satisfies all that occurred that day."

The three adults nodded. "This is true, but it is also a lie. Do you know why the event is called Second Impact?"

"It was called that because it was thought that a meteor had hit Antarctica. Even when the idea was scrapped, the name stuck around because that's what everyone had been calling it."

"This again is both true and false. There once was a secret cabal of witches and warlocks, called SEELE. Buried deep under the ice of the frozen continent, there was a being, one of the Outsiders I mentioned before, that lay sleeping there, dreaming whatever dreams it had. It's name was ADAM, and it was a powerful, ancient thing, worshiped as a god by ancient peoples. SEELE sought to awaken and enslave ADAM, to further their dark designs. Something, however, went wrong. The ceremony was sabotaged by a group of battle mages, led by James Katsuragi, on what the magic using world celebrates as the Katsuragi Expedition. Your father was among them when they struck at SEELE, and was personally responsible for casting down the leader of SEELE, an ancient, even by our standards, man, who went by the name of Kiel Lorenz. This man, whose name is now considered taboo, for a myriad of reasons, worshiped and submitted to another of the Outsiders, a dark god that hails from the far reaches of cold space. His name, which is unspeakable, lest you call his attention to yourself-" His voice grew hard here, commanding the attention of all present, "**and I tell you, you do not want to call his attention to you**, is known as his servant is named now, as 'He Who Must Not Be Named', but is also called the King in Yellow, the Master of the Lake of Hali. His earthly servant is also called 'The Cyborg' for that was one of the means by which he maintained his failing body."

Kozo paused to refill his tea cup. "Naoko, will you continue?"

"Of course. Shinji, while the group led by James tried to stop the ritual, they were too late. They did manage to keep SEELE from accomplishing their goals, however, at the cost of many of their lives and of course, the cataclysm that shook the world. This ritual that they interrupted is known as the 'Ritual of Impact'. It is a dark and forbidden thing, for it call for the deaths and blood sacrifice of millions. This is the true reason behind the name of Second Impact. When the wars erupted across the globe, it was not merely the muggles that fought. The battles of the mundane world were terrible, but more so were the wars of the mages. Your father rose to great prominence during the wars, and eventually lead our armies to victory over the dark mages. He left the army after the wars ended, to stay with his wife, Yui, who he had met while they were both students here. When you were born, it could easily be said that that was one of the happiest days of their lives. This happiness was not to be long lived, however. Your father had made a very powerful and evil thing his enemy that day of Second Impact. The Cyborg, He Who Must Not Be Named, while cast down and seemingly killed, returned. Someone close to your father, one of his trusted lieutenants, a man by the name if Shigueru Aoba, betrayed your father and led the Dark Lord to their home here on Academy grounds. Caught by surprise, your father and mother were cut down. When the Cyborg turned to slay you as well, something happened. As to what happened, well, we simply don't know. Men and women have spent years trying to divine what went on, but the simple fact is that while we can summon up visions of the Dark Lord killing your parents, when he turns to your crib, there is only a massive explosion of light and fire. The entire cottage was engulfed in flame, leaving behind nothing but you sitting in ashes, crying."

Ritsuko handed the stunned boy his cup again, freshly filled with tea. Shuddering, he drank deeply, trying to eke out some comfort from the warm liquid. It didn't really help, however.

The gray haired headmaster nodded to Naoko. "I know that it's a lot to take in, right now, but it's the truth. We took you to your Aunt, being that she was your mother's sister, to live with. It was to protect you from this world, which would have hounded your every footstep. You are more famous than any other living person on this world, Shinji. Every magic user, mage, witch, wizard, every sentient magical creature, they all know your name. You are the One that Lived. You survived against a man that has killed more living things than there are grains of sand on a beach. A man for whom genocide is an activity one does just prior to taking tea. No one who ever was attacked by the Dark Lord ever survived, until you. So, even if there was not a single iota of magical talent in you, and that whatever happened was caused by another, you still will forever be remembered as long as there is someone to recall our history. We wished to shield you from those who would use you for their own ends. Our world has it's share of politics, and it is as every bit as dirty and nasty a business as it is in the muggle world."

Naoko cut in at this point, looking at her watch. "I think that perhaps he should get some rest? He has had a long day, and has found out a great deal all at once. Come, I will take you to your room in the hospital wing." She stood, holding a hand out to Shinji, who stood up but did not take the offered hand.

Knowing that from where he was sitting that Shinji would not be able to see his expression, Kozo smiled smugly. "Naoko, why don't you put him up in the guest room in your suite? I'm sure that staying alone in a strange hospital with no-one he knows nearby would be terribly unsettling."

Shinji turned to the headmaster, a protest already forming on his lips, and thus missed Naoko's dark stare towards Kozo. "No, no, I don't want to be a bother to anyone..."

"Nonsense, I'm sure it wouldn't be any trouble at all, right Naoko?"

The thatamurge looked like she was trying to swallow a live eel. When she spoke, however, her tone belied the murderous expression she held. "Of course not!" She said sweetly, before turning to her daughter. "Ritsuko, be a dear and get him situated for the night."

Not entirely sure what was going on between her two superiors, the blond doctor nodded, and grabbed the surprised boy's hand, and with a whisper, they faded from view.

Naoko exploded. "**What the hell was THAT?**"

Kozo put on a hurt face before answering. "I'm not sure what you mean. I just don't think that given the state he's in and the information we just dumped on him that he should be left unsupervised and alone right now."

She threw her hands up in the air in disgust. "Oh, and one of the elves in the hospital wing couldn't keep an eye on him? Or, he could have stayed with you! Don't think that I'm not onto you."

"Naoko, what are you going on about?"

"ARGH!"

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Ritsuko whispered to him as she made up the bed in the guest room in the suite that her mother and sister lived in. "Bathroom's down the hall, second door on the left. Knock three times before entering, always. Kitchen is off the main room, just walk back to where we came in and you'll see it. I think there's some leftovers in there, so if you're hungry, help yourself."

Shinji, not sure why they were whispering, whispered back to her. "You don't really have to do this, I'm fine with staying in the hospital wing, really."

She smiled at him. "Look, it's too late now, so you're going to sleep here at least for now. It'll probably change later today, but you'll be alright." Finishing with the bed, she walked over to what he assumed was a closet door. She muttered something under her breath, and pulled the door open. "We managed to get ahold of your bags from the train wreck collection site. Everything should be here. You travel light, don't you?"

"It's... it's all that I could salvage from the house. I don't have a lot of things, anyway."

"It's alright, some people just don't gather a lot of stuff. From what I heard about your dad, he was the same way. Now, go and get some sleep!" Not waiting for a reply, she turned and left, shutting the door behind her.

Shinji carefully lay down on top of the covers that Ritsuko had set out, staring at the ceiling. Sleep overcame him almost immediately, and for the first time in a week, it was dreamless.


	5. Chapter 5

When Shinji woke up, it was to the sounds of food being prepared in the kitchen, accompanied by the smell of bacon being fried.

_Bacon? That's a rationed item. How rich are these people?_

However comfortable the bed was, he was reminded once again by his belly that he hadn't had nearly enough food in the past week, and so he moved to the closet that held his meager belongings.

His cello was there, looking none the worse for the train wreck, as was his bag of clothing. He changed from the hospital gown and robe into a pair of slacks and a white shirt, carefully undoing his sling and threading his cast through a rolled up sleeve before trying to redo his sling, but mucking the knot all up. Frustrated, he settled on a rather ineffectual abortion of a sling.

_Should I wear shoes or not? I wasn't wearing any at all last night, but they were. But they were also walking around looking for me. Plus, this is Miss Akagi's home. I guess I'll see what she's wearing._

Deciding to compromise and wear socks, he pulled on a pair, but left his shoes next to the door in the event that he needed to grab them quickly. Leaving the room's door open, he moved silently down the hall back to the main room, in search of the kitchen, and hopefully something to eat.

The main room, now light by sunlight streaming in through the windows, was a large, spacious affair that held a couch and two chairs, with a low table, and a television on one wall. The room was divided by a counter/bar, beyond which was the kitchen. He could see a table with four chairs in it, along with two refrigerators, and an unattended stove, on which there was several pans, one holding smoking bacon, judging by the smell.

Shinji furrowed his brow in confusion. _Two refrigerators? Why does she have two? And who's cooking? I know I heard someone moving around in here before._

Walking into the kitchen, he watched in amazement as a floating spatula flipped the bacon, while in a mixing bowl several eggs were being beaten by a floating whisk. Stunned, he could only just stand there, as the faint traces of a smile appeared on his face as he watched in a child-like sense of wonder.

This was all smashed to bits as the bacon caught fire, bursting into flames that danced up towards the ceiling.

No stranger to cooking mishaps, as he had prepared most of his meals, and the meals for his teacher back at his Uncle's, he immediately started looking for something with which to smother the pan.

As he searched through the cupboards for a large enough lid, he heard someone come running down the hall. Finally finding a suitable lid, he thrust it over onto the pan, just as he heard a surprised exclamation as someone tripped and slid right into him. As he fell, he reflexively reached out with his good hand for something to brace himself with. Unfortunately, his hand closed around on the handle of the frying pan, flipping it up into the air, as the hot grease caught fire again, and began to rain down on the two entangled people below.

Already wincing and bracing for the grease to hit, he only just heard the sharp cry of Naoko Akagi from the living room.

"**Exsisto Etiam!**"

Hesitantly looking up, his eyes opened in shock as he saw the fire and pan frozen in mid air. Suddenly, he was hauled to his feet as Naoko grabbed the collar of his shirt with one hand, and the arm of a protesting girl with the other.

"Just what are you two trying to do, burn down the castle?" Naoko asked irritably, the dark circles under her eyes suggesting that she hadn't slept well.

"I'm sorry... I was watching the... the things cook, when the bacon caught on fire. I was looking for something to smother it with..." Shinji apologized, feeling horrible. _She lets me stay last night and now I've almost torched her home! _He looked down at his feet, chewing on his lower lip.

Rei didn't answer her mother, as she was too busy staring at the strange boy standing next to her in the kitchen. She squeaked, realizing that she was only dressed in a t-shirt and a pair of pajama bottoms, and ran off to her room. Shinji looked up as he heard her departure, only catching sight of a head of blue hair as she rounded the corner and disappeared from view.

Snapping her fingers to get his attention, Naoko pointed to the still frozen flames. "You were doing what, exactly?"

"Umm... I woke up, hearing someone in the kitchen, Miss Akagi. I thought it was you, so I got changed... and when I came in here, I didn't see anyone, but the utensils... they were cooking all by themselves. I just stood there and watched, and... then the bacon c-caught on fire. I k-know that you have to smother grease fires, so I looked for a lid. I was just putting it on when I got knocked down."

"Wait, Rei wasn't in here?" She sighed, shaking her head. "Must have gone to the bathroom." Waving a hand at the flames, she muttered something that Shinji didn't understand, or think was even a real language. The fire promptly vanished, leaving behind the pan, lid and burnt bacon. Turning back to the amazed boy, she motioned to one of the refrigerators. "You said you know about grease fires? I'm guessing that means you can at least cook a little. Would you mind making up some more bacon? Enough for three, please." She glared at the mixing bowl and the still working whisk, snapping her fingers at them, causing the whisk to go limp in the bowl. "And if you feel up to it, can you finish that omelet? I'm going to go have a talk with my daughter." Not waiting for a reply, she turned and headed down the hall, muttering something under her breath about teenagers.

Going to the refrigerator that she had pointed at, he found the bacon easily enough amongst the plethora of foods, many of which were rationed items elsewhere. He paused to stare into the abundance of food, until the appliance began beeping. He shut it hurriedly.

_How is it that they have so much food like this? Do they produce their own food here, by magic? Why don't they do anything to help the millions of starving people?_

He began to fry up the bacon, dropping several slices into the pan, keeping a careful eye on it while he started on the omelet mix. He soon became engrossed in the task of cooking, as he often did when preparing meals, and all other thoughts soon left him.

Naoko leaned against the door to her daughter's room, watching her daughter fidgeting while sitting on her bed. "Rei, what on earth possessed you to use a unattended servant animation on the breakfast? If you had to use the bathroom, all you needed to do was turn the heat down on the stove for a little."

"I wanted to practice, Mom. It shouldn't have caught fire." Eager to change the topic, she switched gears. "Who is that in the kitchen? I would have gotten to it in time if he hadn't surprised me. When did he get here? You could have told me, I'm not wearing anything suitable for company."

"So I noticed." Rei blushed, and crossed her arms in front of her. With a sigh, Naoko continued. "He got here last night, well, very early this morning. He'll be moving out of here later today, so don't worry. I **was** going to introduce you two over breakfast, but you seem to have done so already." She resisted the urge to smirk at her daughter as she blushed even more. "Put something presentable on, or at least a bra", (she did smile now, over Rei's stuttered protests), "and come on back to the kitchen. I'm going to go see if he's butchered breakfast or if he's any good in the kitchen."

As she left, she turned her head over her shoulder as she pulled the door shut. "Oh, and that's Shinji Ikari."

_Damn you Kozo, you stubborn old fool. This is exactly what I wanted to avoid. Now I have to at least let them get to know each other. Why did he wake up so soon? That sleeping spell should have kept him under for another few hours at least. Enough time for me to get Rei out of the castle, and then him out of here. Damn it. _

Her train of though was derailed as she came back into the kitchen, to a table already set for three, with covered dishes scattered on the the table, and the sight of the boy lifting the water kettle from the stove to pour into the teapot. She paused for a moment, off balance.

"This... looks nice..."

Shinji blushed in nervous embarrassment as he poured the water, opening his mouth to apologize. _Does he ever not blush? And is he ever not apologizing for things?_

"-just that sometimes I get lost while cooking, and it... w-well it ends up like this." He made a vague gesture towards the setup on the table. "I hope I didn't make to much or anything..."

"No, no, it's fine. We're just not used to.. such a spread at our private breakfasts." Motioning him to sit, she pulled out a chair for herself. "Now, when my daughter finally gets back in here, I'll introduce you two. Now, she might seem a little strange to you, and have odd questions about the muggle world, but that's because she's been a resident of the Academy for her entire life."

"O-oh, OK." He paused, making the pretense of checking on the tea before looking back up. "Umm... what does muggle mean? I keep hearing it, but no-one's explained what it means."

"Oh! I'm sorry, it's just that it's common vocabulary, but of course you wouldn't know. It means the mundane, the 'normal' world or person. Someone without magic, for the uninstructed, the untaught."

"Untaught? So anyone can learn magic?"

"Well, not really. There are some forms that anyone can learn, but it's not really considered the same as being a true mage. You'll learn more later, I promise."

Rei chose this moment to present herself, now dressed in a dark blue skirt and a white blouse. She paused, as her mother did, when she saw that breakfast was ready. Quietly, she sat down at the third setting.

Naoko cleared her throat. "I had hoped to do this later, without all the theatrics, but Shinji, this is my daughter, Rei. Rei, this is Shinji Ikari. He'll most likely be staying here at the Academy as a student from now on." Turning to Shinji, she pointed to the teapot. "And now, how about we eat? Can you pass me the tea, please?"

Trying not to stare at Rei's pale skin, or her red eyes, or her blue hair, Shinji silently handed the eldest Akagi the teapot. He focused on his eggs and bacon, when Rei startled both him and her mother by speaking up.

"How did you hurt your arm?"

Looking up, he tried not to stutter or stammer, but failed. "Ummm... I d-don't really remember... It was during the attack on the t-train..."

Naoko watched the two, wanting to smash her head into the table. "Yes, we'll have some questions for you about all of that later, Shinji. Ritsuko said that Migo attacked the train?"

Talking to the older woman was easier Shinji thought. "Yes, well, that's what Hoja said. They were after Aoba."

Rei spoke up again, confusion in her voice. "Aoba?"

"Not that Aoba dear. Another one." Naoko turned back to Shinji. "There are two men by the name of Shigueru Aoba. One of them works here, as the aide to the Headmaster. The other is a fiend, a cold and remorseless killer who dabbles in dark magics, and who is the one who betrayed your father to the Dark Lord."

Shinji was confused by her statement, and while he tried to hide it, it showed plainly. Naoko and Rei took it to be just general confusion caused by culture shock. _But he said that he had been away when Mom and Dad were killed. And the Shoggoths didn't seem to distrust him, and they said that he saved them. And how is it that there are two people with the same name? The exact same name?_

"So, if the Migo were attacking the train, after Aoba, they must have soon figured out who you were, then? How did you escape?"

"Well, I didn't, not really. All I remember is blacking out after being tossed around. That's where I broke my arm. I woke up at the town with the Shoggoths with a sling and cast on, anyways."

Naoko raised an eyebrow. "You meet Shoggoths? But how did you get there?"

"Hoja told me that Aoba had brought me there from the train wreck, to hide me from the Migo, and to help get me here to the Academy. Hoja said that he had left after that, but didn't say why." He felt bad about lying to the older woman, but Aoba's words kept running through his head, and things just weren't adding up. The two Shoggoths and the Ghoul had made it sound like Aoba had told him the truth, and they had tried to get him here to the school. Why do that if they had been party to his family's murder? It was a question that he could not answer.

Rei was openly staring in shock at the matter of fact way the boy had mentioned meeting a Shoggoth. "You meet a Shoggoth, talked to one and you didn't think anything was strange?" She managed to ask her question without sounding like accusing him of lying.

He looked over at her and shrugged. "They seemed like normal people at the time, kinda. It wasn't until later that I found out that they can grow more arms. Hotaru said that they were shape-shifters, and that not all of them can look human."

Naoko spoke just as Rei opened her mouth again. "Shoggoths are... well, in their natural shape they look like amorphous blobs. It's a harrowing sight for some. The ones who can form the human shape, well, they are some of the oldest and most powerful ones. But how did you end up lost in the forest? From the sound of it, you didn't run away from them."

"Well, Mr. Hauser was leading us through the forest to the Ruined City. From there we were supposed to take a train, I think, to Mishima, and then here."

"Mr. Hauser? He was not a Shoggoth then, I take it."

"No, he said he was a ghoul."

Both Rei and her mother gasped in horror. Naoko found her voice first. "D-did... did he offer you anything to eat?"

"N-no... he said that it would not be appropriate. I think it has something to do with rank? He said that they were big on social standings and positions, and they think that I'm very important, because of something my dad did."

Both women breathed sighs of relief. "Shinji, it would not be appropriate because the Ghouls are necrophages." Seeing the blank look on her guest's face, she add "It means that they eat dead bodies. Most of the time they don't bother to cook them."

Shinji turned green and swallowed a few times. _Father was involved with them? He seemed to be actually concerned about me though... _"Oh..."

"What happened next? This Hauser character, he was going to take you here?"

"Y-yes, we left for the Ruined City, but it sounded like we were being followed. H-he t-told us to run, and hide at night, and he went to chase off w-whatever it was." He swallowed, the events of the past week catching up to him. "A-and after that, t-the screaming started. The n-next day, Hotaru told me to run and went back herself. I just r-ran and hid, each day. I think I got l-lost, but I couldn't figure out how to tell where I was... then I guess you found me? I didn't really know what was going on, then. I kept telling myself that it was all just a dream, a nightmare..."

Rei, in a bold move of sympathy, impulsively grabbed his empty teacup and filled it again, pushing it towards him. He took it silently, his eyes slightly unfocused as he continued his tale. "The thing that was screaming... it caught up to me that night... it was horrible. It was huge, but bent over, and it didn't walk right. It's fur smelled terrible, and that scream..." He shuddered, as did Naoko, recognizing his description of a Shambling Horror.

_Just what was one of those doing in the woods? Did the Migo send it after him? Things aren't adding up here. _

"I t-think that it almost found me, but then the tree I was hiding next to turning into another monster, and stepped on it."

Naoko, still caught up in her own thoughts, shook her head in confusion. "Wait, what?"

"The tree, it, well, it came alive? I'm not sure, but it looked like it was joined with two other trees, and it's branches were moving all weird, and it stepped on the thing. Then, it just grew a mouth, on the side of one of the trunks. That was when everything exploded, and there was fire and light all around. I don't remember what happened next, all I know is that I woke up in the hospital room."

"Where you met my other daughter, and then tried to run away."

Shinji blushed again, as Rei looked questioningly at her mother. "He met Rits last night?" A frown crossed her face. "How come no one woke me up and told me. I still don't see why-"

Naoko was saved from having to interrupt her daughter by a knock on the door. "Rei, can you go answer that please?"

She rose silently from the table to go to the door, but her mother knew that she was still upset. She sighed, weary from both dealing with teenagers and trying to unravel the ever stranger growing issue of Shinji Ikari. She heard mummered voices from the front door, and looked up as Rei came back with their visitor. She shot a dangerous glare to the Headmaster as he pulled a chair out and sat down.

Kozo beamed at everyone, smiling his somewhat trademark absent-minded and goofy smile that set people at ease, either because they thought him a jolly, absent-minded old man, and thus either would be easy to manipulate and work around, or was just a good-hearted if slightly odd person. While he was generally a good hearted person, was an old man, and at times could be a little absent minded, there was nothing jolly to his nature, and he knew far more about politics and the game of spies than many other seasoned players. He just liked to play the part of a goofy old man. It made his victories that much sweeter, when his opponents thought that a slightly not all together man had bested them.

"Well, isn't this nice. I was in the area, and just felt like there was a delicious breakfast going on in here, so I had to stop by and see how everyone was doing. And my, it does look quite nice." He pulled a cup and saucer from out of one of his sleeves, and help himself to some tea before continuing on, either ignoring or not noticing Shinji's slack-jawed look of amazement and Naoko rolling her eyes. Rei, who had seen him inexplicably show up to private family meals before, simply passed him the sugar dish, knowing that her friend had a sweet tooth.

He turned to Shinji now, taking a sip from his tea. "I must say, I'm surprised to see you up and about. I would have thought you would still be asleep, recovering from your ordeal."

Shinji shook his head. "I just woke up this morning, sir, to the sounds in the kitchen. I just figured that I should get up."

Rei turned red, finding out that **she **had woken him up from what sounded like a much needed rest, espially concerning all the terrible things that he had endured. She shrank slightly into her chair, fidling with her teacup.

Kozo beamed again, this time at the blue-haired girl. "I must say, Rei, that from the smell of it, and looking at the remains of the food, that you put out quite a meal for our friend here."

Naoko wished that she could kick him from under the table, but he was on the far side, and the two teenagers were in the way. Still, this was an opportunity to try to split them up. "Actually, Shinji prepared all this. Rei almost set the castle on fire." While she said it rather matter-of-factly, with no hint of accusation, she was rewarded as both boy and girl turned red, and looked off in different directions, unable to meet anyone's eyes.

So, it was that they missed the sparkle in Kozo's eyes. _So you want to play this game do you, dear? _He winked at his second in command, who suddenly glared at him again. _Let's see how you deal with this one._ He cleared his throat suddenly, drawing the children's eyes back to him.

"Rei, why don't you take young Mr. Ikari here on a tour of the castle and some of the grounds? Your mother and I have some things to discuss before we get him situated in a room of his own." He waved both of them on, noting the small tentative smiles on both faces. "Don't worry about the dishes, we'll take care of them." He continued to sip his tea as both teenagers rose and left, quietly watching Naoko seethe silently, a glare on her face, until the front door closed behind them.

"I had an interesting conversation this morning, Naoko." He stopped to refill his tea. "Charagon himself called me this morning, demanding to know if we had recovered the boy, or as he put it, 'The Master'."

The anger she had been feeling as Kozo kept pushing the two together was instantly replaced by dread. "Charagon? He called you, and not one of their High Council? Shinji said that he was being taken to the City before they were going to take him here. Did he demand we give them the boy?"

"No, oddly enough, they wanted to know if we knew who they should go to war against for sending chasers after him. It seems that they have transferred their loyalty from the father to the son. He said that they have raised the black banner, and will wait for his instructions."

She carefully put her cup down on the table, taking a few deep breaths before speaking. "The Black Banner. The Standard of Vengeance. The War Flag of the Ghouls. They've raised it, and want that boy to send them to war."

"Yes. And while he didn't mention it, I've received reports that Ikari's flag has been raised from half-mast in all of their cities. Charagon wants to flood Tokyo-3 with his soldiers, to provide security. He doesn't want a repeat incident. I told him that while I could not stop him from doing that, none would be allowed inside the Academy grounds itself."

"Do they know about Aoba? That he met with the boy on the train?"

"He said that the Shoggoths told them about the Migo attack. There is a small commune not too far from where the train was attacked, and it is on the way to the Ruined City from that direction. I'm sending Katsuragi to meet them, to find out what they know. They should revere her almost as much as Shinji, so she should be able to get some answers."

"I assume that you were listening to him as he told his tale, then. Why wouldn't the Shoggoths kill Aoba? He betrayed their messiah to the same Dark Lord that had enslaved them. This makes no sense."

"What makes even less sense is that Charagon wanted to know if Aoba had returned to serve as the boy's manservant. I'm not sure that they believe that Aoba is the one who betrayed the Ikaris. Even if the Shoggoths didn't kill him on sight, if the Ghouls thought that even for a moment Aoba had betrayed their Ghoul-Laird, they would be hunting him down until they caught him. He would not be able to hide from them."

"But he was the one who had the decoy spell! Only he knew where they were! We didn't even know where on the grounds his cottage was. Only those who knew where it already was would be able to find it, and that was a grand total of three! Yui, Gendo and Aoba!"

"I know, but while Aoba might be a wanted man in our lands, our society, it seems that the staunchest non human allies of Ikari have given him a free pass. My people have not mentioned this before, and I am going to be asking why."

"What about the Shambling Horror in the woods? Shinji said that there was one that had been chasing them. Those things don't just randomly pop up out of nowhere in Japan. In China, in the Himalayas, sure, but not here. Someone called it here, and sent it after him. Could it be the Migo? They attacked the train, apparently after Aoba. If they did realize that he was Ikari's son, they would try to kill him."

"And what of the one of the Thousand Young he encountered? He said that it stepped on the horror."

Kozo shrugged. "There have been sightings of the Young in those woods before. You know just as I do that they're like puppies. Big, mind shattering, unnatural horrors, but they have the same basic attitude as a baby dog. I can accept the Shoggoths and the Ghouls looking out for the boy, but I have to draw the line at suspecting that the Black Goat is keeping an eye on the boy."

Naoko shook her head. "But it's still too neat, that he just happened to be hiding behind one of the young, and that it took care of the thing chasing after him. So much of all this just doesn't make any sense."

"And if we had kept him here from the start, we wouldn't have to worry about it."

"And we wouldn't even know that things weren't making sense, that things were not adding up like they are supposed to." she retorted, scoring a few points. "Has Aoba anything to offer on this mess? I suppose it's too much to ask if he can tell where his twin is."

Kozo shook his head. "As soon as I got done talking to Charagon, I asked Aoba about him. He still can't tell where he's at, only that he's still alive and still on Earth. He tried to reestablish the mind-link, but couldn't."

She sighed again, trying to resist the urge to bang her head on the table. "Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Aoba didn't betray them. That he went into hiding like he was supposed to, with the decoy spell drawing anyone searching for them away from here and after him. How could the Dark Lord get through our security, with no-one knowing, find the cottage, and then kill them? It's impossible, even with all the powers he supposedly had."

"The Cyborg was ancient. It's possible that he could do the impossible. Who knows how long he's really been alive? He's already come back from the grave once. We both know that he'll do it at least one more time, according to the scrolls. I think that if he can do **that**, finding a way around the warding spell on the cottage and the Ikaris should be easy."

Both adults looked up as the front door opened and Ritsuko shouted out a greeting. The blond doctor grabbed a fresh cup from the cupboard and settled down in one of the empty chairs.

"Well, the artifact has woken up, I guess you could say. We're getting massive psychic reading emanating from the core socket. It's definitely responding to his presence, even through all of the shielding. When are we waking him up and taking him down there? I'm interested in seeing what happens when he's in the same room as it."

Naoko's eyes narrowed. "That's another thing. The sleeping charm we put on his teacup last night should have had him sleeping until late afternoon. How the hell did he wake up to Rei in the kitchen? A herd of centaurs could have been playing polo in here and he shouldn't have woken up."

"It is interesting that he woke up. Very interesting, indeed. Perhaps he has a natural resistance to magic? It could explain how it is that he is still alive, despite the efforts of the Cyborg."

Ritsuko stared at the two. "He woke up?" Her eyes narrowed. "Was it about an hour or so ago? Because we got a major spike at seven forty five. It settled back down again after that, and we weren't sure what caused it. The damn thing twitched, even with the terminator plug inserted. Missing the core, and with the terminator inserted, it shouldn't be able to move."

"When are we getting the core? If we have the boy now, we should bring the core here as well. He'll need to begin familiarization training soon enough. Even if the first of the things isn't supposed to show up for a while longer, there's no need to push it off anymore than we have."

"I have a man already on it. Kaji left this morning for Geneva. He'll obtain the core from the vault, and bring it back here. Once it's been inserted, we'll begin primary tests."

"I still say we tell him the truth. Show him the scrolls, tell him the prophecies. Show him Lilith."

Kozo shook his head, raising a hand to stave off further argument. "We've already been following in the steps laid out by Ikari so far, despite my best efforts to the contrary. I think that even though the reasons we've been doing so are for different ones than he probably had in mind when he was on the tree, we'll stick by the **plan**" he shot a look at Naoko that her daughter didn't understand, "that was laid out. We've already discovered that somethings that we held as true may not be as they seem. There might be a reason, a method to the insanity of the plan."

Naoko snorted in disgust. "Oh, of course there is a reason. Ikari just had to have people dancing to the tune he called, and even from beyond the grave he is still pulling the puppet strings."

"You're the one who's strings were pulled first.** You** were the one who wanted him placed with his family." He raised his hand again to silence her angry response before she even spoke. "Why you wanted to do so is immaterial, because it still fit his plan."

"The thing that irritates me the most is that he didn't even look at the damn transcription after we cut him down. He goes through all that trouble, spouts out this insane set of instructions for the future, and then goes off to hide in the woods with his wife and son. It's like he knew that he was going to die. That he was planning on it."

"He might have been fine with his own death, but Yui? He would do things that would make the Cyborg look like a benevolent man if he thought that someone was going to kill his wife. You saw what he did to the Tcho-Tcho when they kidnapped her. He would never just accept her death. And I doubt as much so for his son."

"So what, he just decided, after reading the scrolls, go onto the tree, babble out this mess of instructions, and then go try to avoid whatever it was that he saw in the visions? You knew him better than me, but that sounds ridiculous."

Kozo shrugged, leaning back in his chair. "I agree that it wasn't very much like him, but I can't claim to know his mind. Who knows what he saw? All he told me was that the stars were shifting and that there would be another attempt at impact. Besides, if he really knew that someone would come for him, even with the safeguards in place, why not hide Yui and Shinji someplace else first, and then face whatever was coming? If you gave him any time at all to prepare, he would be able to repulse any attack on himself."

Ritsuko spoke up, butting in on the conversation. "We can ask 'what ifs' and 'whys' all we want, but it's not going to give us any answers. We still don't know why the Cyborg even had brought Rei with him to the Ikari's cottage. The minions you captured then didn't have any information on why she was there."

Kozo looked out the window, not really focusing on anything. "I may have to go up on the tree myself. Things aren't making any sense and I hate working blind."

"We could try necromancy again. Call him up, try to get him to talk."

Naoko shook her head at her daughter's suggestion. "Without a physical remnant we can't force his spirit to appear, and he never did take well to being summoned while alive, let alone now that he's dead. He's never shown up before when we tried, and I see no reason for him to do so now."

"It's still something we can try. It can't hurt, anyways."

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Rei tapped a foot impatiently as Shinji just stared up at the 'sky', a vast dome of metal. "We're really underground?" He asked again, awe in his voice. "What did you call this again?"

"It's a geo-front. It's a massive underground cavern that was hollowed out and used by the mages as the new home for GEHIRN. It's one of the ways that we hide from the muggles." She stared at the awestruck boy, quietly studying his features as he turned in a small circle, looking around. "You know, it's not the most amazing thing here." She said in her matter of fact tone.

"Are you kidding? This is amazing! How big did you say it was?"

"It's a half-sphere with a diameter of fifteen miles, and half that going from the center of the ground circle up to the highest point of the dome. From the very top of the of dome to the surface of the Earth is another two miles." She rocked back and forth on her feet, and blew a strand a hair from out of her eyes. "There's a lot more to see, just around the castle itself."

Still awestruck, he followed her down the path leading from the front gate of the castle. "How did this place get here? It must have taken a long time to dig out."

Rei shrugged. "Magic."

Shinji blushed in embarrassment. _Of course, magic, how else? She must think I'm a moron._

_How come no-one told me that he was here? _She watched him from the corner of her eyes. _At least he hasn't said anything about my eyes or hair yet. _She hated it when that was the first thing that people commented on when they met her, and so far, their guest hadn't even stared at her. It was a pleasant change from normal. "So you really don't know anything about your parents, or the wizarding world?"

He shook his head in response. "No, the only things I know are what the Headmaster and your Mom told me last night. I grew up thinking that my parents were farmers who died when a car hit them at a train station."

"They never told you anything?" Rei was confused. Why hide the truth about his parents from him? They were celebrated war heroes, who had stood against one of the greatest evils mankind had ever witnessed. Everyone knew of the Ikari Tragedy.

"No, they never did." Shinji's tone was somewhat resentful. "I don't know why. They obviously knew, but they never said anything. Lots of people apparently knew all about it, and me, but I didn't know anything."

"Yes."

They stopped at the top an incline. Rei pointed out towards the forest and lake that could be seen. "This is forest preserve and The Lake. Most students are forbidden from entering the forest and going down to the lake, but I can." She turned around and waved at the castle. "This is the castle Hogwarts, taken here in ages past from it's original home in Scotland. It has a long history, some parts nicer than others. You'll learn about it in one of the history classes."

"It's a real castle? Real stone and stuff?"

Rei nodded silently, unsure as to the nature of his query. _Is it not there? It certainly is not made of fake stone. _

"How is it that it's got regular lights and electricity then? The plugs and outlets are all installed like they would be in a regular modern building."

Rei was puzzled, and if one knew her well enough, one could tell in her voice. Shinji however was not quite up to speed on the nuances of interacting with Rei. "What good is magic if you can't use it to cheat your way past the normal limitations on things? Just because it's a castle, we should use candles for everyday lighting? The inefficient light output of a candle would lead to severe eyestrain. Just because we have access to magic does not mean that we forgo the conveniences of the modern world."

"Oh. That makes sense."

They wandered around the grounds immediately surrounding the castle, Rei pointing out various places like the green-houses, the barns and farm areas, the much smaller and attended wooded park, and the road to the town that lay a mile or so off. She explained that the Academy was designed to be largely self sufficient, and while it might seem that the school was the only thing here, there was a lot more going on behind the scene, so to speak. The amount of people who lived and worked in the geo-front was staggering, and they had occupations ranging from farmers to nuclear physicists.

They were wandering the hallways now, Rei pointing out directions to the various dormitories and classes, when they came along to a hallway lined with photos, actual photos and not the various paintings that could be found everywhere else. A quick glance at the nameplates on the picture frames made it obvious that this hallway was a shrine to the dead, the names punctuated with two dates underneath them. Shinji stopped where he stood, completely still, looking down the hall. Rei silently berated herself for not paying attention to where she had been taking him.

"M-miss Akagi? A-are there pictures of my parents up here?" He stuttered, but his voice was otherwise even, betraying no emotion.

"Yes."

She stood where she was as he began to slowly walk down the hallway looking for his parent's pictures, reading each nameplate in turn. When he finally found them, the two pictures side by side, he reached up to touch the pictures in turn.

His father's picture was obviously a school photo, a young man some years older than Shinji was, dressed in robes staring impassively at the camera from behind a pair of glasses. He seemed to be smirking, but Shinji wasn't sure if it was just a trick of the camera that did it. He could see some resemblance to the face he saw in the mirror.

His mother's picture wasn't a school photo, but one that had come from someone's personnel collection. She was smiling, and laughing at something outside the confines of the picture. It looked like it was summer outside, but Shinji wasn't sure if that was because it was summer, or if it was due to the climate controlled geo-front. Regardless, it looked like a warm sunny day at a wooded picnic area.

Blinking to hold back the tears he could feel forming behind his eyes, he turned to the silent girl behind him, his voice catching a little when he spoke. "D-do you think I c-could get copies of these? I-I don't have any photos of them."

Rei nodded silently, not sure what to do. She counted herself lucky that she had no relatives up on the wall, even if she didn't know who her father was. Neither her mother or sister ever spoke of the man, and there were no pictures of him anywhere in the family albums. Even her mother's wedding photos had been torn in half or simply removed. She had stopped wondering about him a long time ago, when in her child's mind the Headmaster replaced her absent father. _Perhaps it is better that I not know. Would I be able to mourn a man I never met? He seems to do so, but he also lost both parents, and thought they died in an automobile accident. Would it have been better for him to have been told nothing?_

"I will talk to the Headmaster. He will be able to get you copies of those photos." She shifted her wieght from foot to foot. "If you want, we can go and look for some photos in my family's picture albums. I know my mother has some older photos of your mother."

"S-she won't mind?"

Rei shook her head. "I am sure that she won't. How is it that you have no pictures of them? Did your family not have any?"

He shook his head as they walked back down the hall. "No, they barely had any photos of themselves and their son. I don't think that we even had a camera."

"It sounds like you were very lonely. Did you not spend time with your cousin and your friends? Surely someone had a camera to take pictures."

Shinji shook his head, rubbing his shoulder with his free hand. "No, he died in the wars, and I didn't have any friends. I was home-schooled by our neighbor. I almost never saw anyone my age, ever."

Rei watched him, and then stopped. Reaching out, she untied the startled boy's sling and retied it with an actual knot, securing his arm much better than it had been before.

"Thanks..."

"You're welcome."

They continued down the hall in silence, neither one entirely sure what to say to the other.


	6. Chapter 6

"And this will be your home, at least while classes are not in session." Ritsuko threw open the door, and ushered Shinji through. He walked into the apartment, which consisted of the entryway leading into the small kitchen, with a bathroom door on the left. The only other room lay at the end of the kitchen/hall, and held a bed and a dresser. A window allowed in the 'daylight' from 'outside'.

Following her sister into Shinji's apartment, Ritsuko continued her little spiel. "Like I said before, while classes are in session you will be expected to reside in the dormitories of your house, but during your free time you'll be able to hang out or study in here if you want. Anything you don't want to keep in your chests or wardrobe in the dormitory can be kept here, but I'm guessing you don't have to much stuff, do you?"

Rei frowned at her sister. "That's mean Rits. A plane did crash into his house you know."

Shinji shook his head. "It's OK. I didn't have that much stuff there either. The only thing I really had was my cello. This is more than enough space."

Both sisters stared at him. Ritsuko recovered first. "Well, moving on... Now, Shinji, remember that you have this apartment because you'll be living here, year round. With all that's happened, it's too dangerous for us to send you back to your Aunt and Uncle's place for holidays and whatnot. Plus, well...eh, don't worry about. After a while you won't notice it. I haven't left the geo-front in over a year, and Rei's never been out."

"RITS!" Rei shouted in protest, turning red, and bolted from the small apartment. Shinji turned from the still open door to the older woman.

"She's never been outside of the geo-front?"

Ritsuko sighed. "No, it's too dangerous for her. Our mother, well, she was working on some research when she was pregnant with Rei, and, well, there was an accident. High level magic can be very dangerous, Shinji. I'm not going to lie to you about that fact. Magic can be used to help make things, and do things otherwise impossible, but it can also be used to destroy. It's just like any other tool. And just like radioactive materials, there are some magics that it's considered best for pregnant women to avoid. Mom had taken all the right precautions, but sometimes, things can go wrong. Rei is the way she is because she has an organ that is seemingly dedicated to the production and manipulation of magic. We call it an S2 Organ. She has to work very hard to keep extra magic and power from being put into her spells, which can sometimes cause, well, unintended side effects. It also makes her a sort of beacon for all the manner of unsavory critters and people, so she has to stay in the geo-front for her safety. Mom feels horrible about it, and since her daughter can never leave, she's vowed to remain here forever as well. Only in a few dire emergencies has she ever been forced to break that vow."

Shinji was breathless. "So... she's trapped down here, until she dies?"

She nodded. "Most of the time she's not bothered by it, but other days... mostly around when we get the students back from holiday or when they leave, she gets touchy about it."

"Trapped here, knowing the illusion of the outside world, but never to actually see it or experience it? To hear about it only from her friends? That's so sad..."

"Yes, well, when you go looking for her to cheer her up, don't let her see your pity. She hates that almost as much as she hates people staring at her."

Shinji blushed, thinking that she was admonishing him for stealing glances at her younger sister. "I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. She's... she's beautiful. I've never seen anyone with blue hair like that. I mean, I know that albinos have red eyes, but she's not an albino, is she?"

"You what? Err... Well, yes, she's not an albino. We get the sunlight down here via magic, but for some reason you can't tan from it. It's pretty interesting, though. But yeah, her hair and eyes are after effects from the accident. She can be sensitive about it sometimes. She set a girl on fire when she suggested that she dyed it to get attention."

"Uh..."

"But you should go and look for her. Ask her to start giving you the rundown on all the basics about life as a student. You'll be playing catch-up, after all."

He paused now, uncertain of what she meant. "Catch-up?"

"Oh, don't worry about it. I'm sure that you'll be a natural. Go on, shoo! I'll just get your closet set up. I'll leave the key on the counter. Go on!"

He left the apartment unsure where to begin looking. _Maybe I should have asked her where she might go. I barely know my way around here. This place is huge, and that's assuming that she's hiding in the castle. How big did she say the geo-front was? A thirty mile long circle?_

"I say, young man, but you seem rather lost." The voice was smooth, and a little haughty.

Shinji spun around, looking for the speaker. "Huh?"

"Yes, definitely lost."

"Not the brightest, either." A second voice spoke up, and was followed by laughter that seemed to echo up and down the hall, but strangely did not fade.

"Stop, child! Look at me! Look at the painting, you dolt!"

Shinji stopped, and stared at one of the paintings. An man in a dark suit and a cape of peacock feathers winked at him, causing him to stumble backwards.

"Ah, now you've got it! Yes, boy, the paintings are alive. Now, as I was saying, you look a little lost."

Feeling stupid, Shinji scratched the back of his head. "Well, yes, I am. I've only been here a day, and I'm"

"I don't recall asking you for your life story you know."

Getting annoyed at being talked down to by a painting, of all things, Shinji couldn't help but snapping back at the man. "Well, what do you want then? I'm busy."

More laughter surrounded Shinji as the painting Shinji had addressed frowned at him. "Is that any way to talk to me, mortal? I should think not. What are you so busy doing that has you lost down here?"

"I'm looking for someone." Shinji glared at the painting. "So if you'll excuse me, I'll be going."

"You know, boy, there are paintings all over the castle. I could help you in your search... if you wanted to strike a deal."

"What sort of deal?"

"Oh, nothing much. I'll help you out now, since you need help, and later on, if I need help doing something, I'll be able to call on you."

"What sort of help would a painting need?" Shinji was thoroughly confused now, and the snickering laughter of the other paintings was not helping things.

"Oh, nothing much. You'd be getting quite the bargain, you would. I help you find this person you're looking for, and later, when I need some small favor, I'll be able to call on you for assistance. What do you say, boy?"

"Well, for one, it sounds like they are laughing at me." Shinji pointed up and down the hall as the laughter died down. "I'm not stupid. This magic business is weird, but I'm not stupid. I know that when someone is trying to make a deal with you and other people are laughing, well, something's not right." He had learned that as a younger child, many years ago on one of the rare trips into the city. Several bullies had found him to be an easy mark that day, and he had paid for his ignorance in spades. However, while the lesson had been harsh, and dearly paid for, it was one that he had learned well. He now had an inherent distrust of people who mentioned striking up bargains, and who seemed to travel in groups, on top of the fact that he was uncomfortable around large groups of people in the first place. And when other people were laughing while he wasn't, he started to get mad.

As he opened his mouth to continue, a new voice sounded. "For another, paintings are not supposed to be making deals with the students."

Turning around, he found someone standing there who had not been there a minute ago. She was tall, with a striking figure and long purple hair that reached down to the floor. She winked at him, grinning impishly, and continued. "So, please, tell me, Mazerath" the man in the painting winced as she carefully enunciated the name, "what help could a painting **possibly** want from a student such as this one? Why, he hasn't even been sorted yet. He knows no spells, no incantations. To make a deal with this one would be foolish indeed. If you were going to break the rules, at least do it with someone who could actually help you."

Mazerath hissed through clenched teeth. "If he has no magic, why is he here? School has not yet begun."

"That is a very good question, but to one that I know the answer, and I don't feel like sharing." She stuck her tongue out at the painting. Clapping a hand on the boy's uninjured shoulder, she turned him to face the direction he had been going.

She bent down, whispering into his ear, her warm, rose scented breath tickling him as she spoke. "Go down this hallway until you reach the library. She likes to hide out in there. Don't talk to paintings, they are a bad influence." She patted him on the rear, making him jump a little as she added a soft squeeze, and chuckled to herself as he sped down the hallway.

"Oh, Mazerath, it would never have worked out for you. You wouldn't be able to strike a bargain with him."

Mazarath's tone was both petulant and haughty at the same time. "And why would that be, Mistress Katsuragi?"

"Because that boy is already dead."

"A rather grim statement, I must say." Ritsuko was not happy. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't share that theory with the boy. Or my sister."

Misato shrugged, "It's the truth."

Ritsuko crossed her arms, glaring at her friend. "You don't know that for certain. He certainly has all the life-signs of a normal living person."

"He's deader inside than your sister." She sighed, and held her hands up in surrender. "It doesn't matter though. If the old man thinks that we can use him in the fight, I'm aright with using him."

"Gee, thanks. And my sister? " Ritsuko asked, her tone acidic.

Shrugging again, Misato played with some of her hair, making it curl around her waist like a living belt. "She's a golem. Not alive. Not exactly dead, in her case, but not really alive. More like a galvanized corpse. Not that boy though. He's not the Boy Who Lived. He's the Boy What Died and Didn't Realize It." She sighed again. "You must be all in a quiver to get him up on the slab and try and figure that one out."

"I'm not going to dissect him!"

"Charlie might, if you don't."

"He wouldn't dare."

"Probably cause he's still got your cloths on his slab?" Misato asked archly, smiling again at her friend.

Ritsuko blushed, but otherwise ignored the jab. "What do the Shoggoths say about him?"

Misato started walking down the hallway towards the library. "Oh, they have nothing but great and wonderful things to say about the 'Young Lord'. They haven't seen any trace of the one they sent with the boy though. They've already written her off as a loss."

"Really? I would have thought they would be searching high and low for her."

"They said the only reason she would not have been with the boy when we picked him up was because she had died fighting off the pursuers. That she would have fought to the death."

"It would be in character for them, concerning who his father was. I sometimes forget that he had... allies like those, outside of GEHIRN."

"I know what you mean. While I was there, a Ghoul raiding party stopped by to talk to Hoja."

"Mother said that the Ghouls were mobilizing. I don't think that she knows they are sending out raiding parties though."

"The Headmaster does. I talked to him as soon as I got back. They were wearing his colors. They were wearing his heraldry."

"The seven eyes?"

"The seven eyes." Misato said grimly. It was weird, seeing it again, seeing the oddly compelling symbol that she had last seen as a young girl. "How much does the boy know? "

"Not much. The Headmaster wants to bring him into things slowly. He doesn't want him going the way of his mother, after all."

"Her device did save the world. It's a shame that it cost her her sanity."

"You ever wonder why it was that his father was able to use it without going mad?"

"Pfft. That man never gave anything up to anyone, ever. You think he'd give his soul to hunk of machine and meat?"

"An interesting perspective. Why are headed for the library?"

"Because I want to see if zombie boy managed to find the place. I don't feel like having to go look for him later."

"Alienating him won't help with getting him to fight SEELE, Misato."

"Why are so interested in him anyways? I mean, yeah, it's neat and all that he's still moving around, but if he was the walking magical nexus golem doom machine your 'sister' is, we would have had him under lock and key a long time ago."

"We think that he'll be able to use the device."

"You think what? It's never worked before, has it? What was it you were always calling it? The oni system? Cause it's a bitch?"

Sighing the sigh of the long-suffering, Ritsuko responded with annoyance. "The Oh-Nine system. Because there was only a 0.0000000000001 percent chance that it would work with anyone we threw in the thing. But check this out, when he got here, the thing light up like Christmas. Even without the core, the wards started to burn up around the thing."

"The wards that happen to be made of gold and lead poured into inch thick carvings on a basalt slab. Those wards."

Ritsuko nodded. "Those wards. The lead ones simply evaporated around it. Poof. We didn't even know what was happening at the time."

Misato held up a hand, and slowly opened the door to the library. The two women silently strained their ears, and broke into grins as they heard Rei giggle at something. Misato shut the door again.

"So what's next? We plug him into the god killing uber-golem, and point him in Leng's direction?"

"We need the core first. They've already sent someone to Geneva to collect it."

"OK, so we plug the boy and the rock into the golem, and then point him in Leng's direction."

"no, we plug the Philosopher's stone into the device, and then run tests on it while we train him up on the magics we think will help him be able to use the device without losing his soul and going mad. Then, we run tests on him inside the device to make sure he's not losing his soul and going mad."

Misato lifted her eyebrows in eagerness. "Then," she said, in a voice akin to a purr, but not the purr of a house cat, but that of a jungle cat, "Then we point him in the direction of Leng."

"Then we point him in the direction of Leng." Ritsuko agreed.

A dreamy smile drifted over the purple haired woman's features. "And we sit back, and watch him deliver payback, with over a decade's worth of interest."

"That's the plan, anyways. We've set him up with an apartment on this floor to use while we're not in session."

"What, we're not going to have someone keep an eye on him? We've still got a month before the year picks up."

"There will be plenty of people around to keep a general eye on him, and I think the Headmaster wants Rei to help integrate him into things."

"Makes sense, I mean, she's stuck here year round, and it's not like she's got anything else to do. She could do with a new friend. Wait, how much does he know about her?"

"Just what everyone else knows. I told him about the accident."

"OK, so there is a chance they might get all retarded for each other. Would be awfully convenient."

"Yes, well, I'm not sure my mom would agree. She's rather put out with the Headmaster right now."

"Oh, are they arguing again? What, she doesn't think Rei's ready for boys? We were snogging guys at her age." She winked at her blond companion. "And some girls, too."

Ignoring the not so subtle jab in her direction, Ritsuko shook her head. "I don't think it's that so much as his parentage. She hated his father. She won't tell me why, and if I ask the Headmaster about it, he tells me to ask her."

"Well, isn't that what wizards do? Keep secrets?"

"That's a terrible stereotype and you know it."

Misato tossed her head, sniffing indifferently. "I don't know what you're talking about, miss wonder-worker." Misato looked around, realizing that she had no idea where they were at. "Hey, where are we going?"

"I'm going to my lab. I've got some work I want to do. Got a couple of experiments I want to finish up before I have to start worrying about helping out in the classrooms again."

"We could gossip about the boy. The Ghouls and Shoggoths were impressed enough with him. Anyone started a pool on what house he's going to get sorted into?"

"I don't think anyone's been collecting money just yet, but if I was putting money down on it, I'd say Ravenclaw. They always seem to draw more than their share of the researchers and scientists, you know, going in for all the old ancient and forbidden knowledge what eats one's sanity away."

"His mum was a Ravenclaw."

"Yep."

"Dad was a Slytherin though. He might follow in his dad's footsteps, especially if we're hoping that he's able to use the golem reliably. Besides, these people do seem to get sorted into the same houses as the rest of the family."

"More hope for Ravenclaw then. The Ikaris have always had a tendency for that house, while Gendo came from an orphan-house. No known pedigree there."

"If he gets sorted into the snakes, your mum is going to pitch a fit then."

Ritsuko smiled. "Probably. I don't know how they want to handle this though. It's not like they can just toss him in with kids his age, but putting him in with the first years? It makes no sense. He would stick out like a sore thumb."

"He'll stick out either way. I'm sure the old man's got a plan."

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Shinji shut the door to the library behind him. "Miss Akagi? Hello? Are you in here?"

From out of nowhere, a squat man with long unruly orangeish-red hair appeared, a scowl on his face. "Hey, who are you? What are you doing in the library?"

Somewhat taken aback, Shinji bowed. "I'm sorry, sir, my name is Shinji Ikari, and I'm looking for-"

He was cut off as the man snorted. "So you're Ikari's brat, are you? Let me get a look at ya." He reached up with an improbably long arm and yanked on his ear, drawing him down to eye level. Shinji gulped as sparkling eyes peered into his. "Hrmm... You don't look like much.. Why are you casing after Akagi's little girl? You bothering her?"

"Umm.. no, well, I don't think I am."

"You don't think you are? If a girl runs off away from you, it's kinda pretty good sign that yer bothering her." He had not yet released the vice like grip he held on Shinji's ear.

"Well, she didn't run away from anything I said or did." Shinji added shortly.

Letting go of him at last, the man crossed his arms. "Well, I'll let you look around in here, as long as you can tell me the rules."

"What rules?"

He threw his hands up in disgust. "What rules? What rules he asks." He paused, breathing deeply and Shinji suspected that he was silently counting to ten, based off the silent motion of his lips, before continuing. "The rules of the library. I trust you've been to a library before?"

"Yes, I've been to a library before."

"Good! At least you're not a savage, unlike some people." He sniffed. "So, what are the rules?"

Not entirely sure that this was happening, Shinji thought hard. "Be quiet, sign books out, return books on time, don't touch the rare books without permission, put things back where you found them. No eating or drinking."

Still scowling, the man tilted his head from side to side as he mulled over the list Shinji had recited. "Well, kinda basic, but I suppose it'll do for now. I don't want you touching anything that's got chains on it, and stay out of the restricted sections! Now, I'll also not have any-"

What ever it was he want going to have any of would remain a mystery as the blue haired girl appeared, grabbing Shinji's free hand and whisking him away. "I'll take care of him Mr. Abelii!"

Mr. Abelii scowled again shaking a fist after them. "No running in the library!"

They stopped on the fourth floor of the library, sitting in a pair of the old leather chairs that dotted the place. Rei sighed.

"So I guess my sister told you about me then." Her tone was matter of fact and without emotion, but he noticed a tightening around the corners of her eyes.

Cringing, Shinji nodded. "I'm sorry, it wasn't any of my business to hear that Miss Akagi,"

"Why do you keep calling me that? My name's Rei. I mean, you can't really call my mom and sister that, cause they're doctors, and my mom's a professor, but you don't need to call me miss or anything."

"Oh, OK."

"So what did my sister with her big mouth say?"

"Umm... well, she said that there was an accident with your mom, and that because of it you can't leave the geo-front, ever."

"So you decided to come see the caged freak then?" She asked, her voice suddenly bitter. "Well don't bother. I might be caged, but I don't do tricks."

Shocked at this sudden shift in attitude, he swallowed. "It's not like that! I kinda know what it's like... and now I'm not allowed to leave either."

Rei blinked, turning back to look at him. "What do you mean, you're not allowed to leave?"

"Well, I when I left my home to come here, I wasn't sure if I was going to stay. I only came because I had an opportunity to do so. Otherwise, I'd still be stuck on the farm. My Aunt and Uncle weren't going to let me come, you see." He paused, trying to figure out the best way to explain it. "They kept me on the farm for most of my life. I had only gone to town with them a few times, and never on my own. I was home-schooled by a retired instructor who lived near us, so I never had any friends my age." He swallowed, hard, before plunging into the unknown and murky waters of conversation. "You're really the first person my age I've really talked to."

Obviously not believing him, Rei narrowed her eyes. "I can read minds, you know. If I read yours, and you're lying to me... I will... I will... " She giggled. "I'll turn you into a cat. I'll turn you into a cat and put a collar on you, and make you catch mice."

Shinji paled, uncertain if she was joking or not. "Well... go ahead then! I'm not lying." He silently cursed the fact that he couldn't cross his arms dramatically.

Rei giggled again. "I can't really read minds" she said to him in a mock whisper. "It's very hard to learn how to do it, and we're not taught how to do so at school." She paused. "I can turn you into a kitty though. But only for a little while." She winked as he shivered a little. "What's it like, being in a rainstorm? From what I hear, I imagine that it's like being in a giant shower with your clothes on."

He smiled. "Yes, it kinda is, I suppose. A lot of times the wind blows and whips the rain into your face."

She waved a arm at the library. "I've been underground for my entire life. I have never seen the sky with my own eyes, never felt the warmth of the sun's rays as they kiss my face. I will never climb the mountains, to stand there at the roof of the world, seeing it all laid out before me. This world, this hollowed out cavern, is all I have ever known, and all I ever will. It is too dangerous for me to leave. Every year, as far back as I can recall, I have seen people come, and I have seen them leave. Yes, I can go to the town down the road, and browse the wares the merchants bring down to sell, or I can order things online and get them delivered here. It's not the same. I can read about the things up there, I can see them in pictures or videos, or if I'm lucky I can scry them with spells, but it is not the same as really experiencing them."

Shinji shook his head. "It's not. And knowing that it's all so close... and yet so far away... it can be maddening. I stopped caring about them a long time ago, I think. I just concentrated on my chores, on learning what my teacher decided to instruct me in. I saw him, my aunt and my uncle. That was my world. The only things I had to escape with was my cello, and the ocean."

Rei stared at him, seeing a kindred soul. She too had grown tired of hearing about things second hand from her small circle of friends.

"Tell me about the ocean."

He paused, looking at her. "It's vast. Where we lived, it was on a cliff that overlooked the sea. I never got to go down to it, to swim in it or anything, but I could sit on the cliff and just look at it. It went on forever, stretching over the horizon. When the sun set, it seemed like the water caught fire. They say that it was blue, once, like the lakes and the rivers. It's red now," he paused, swallowing hard, not sure if he should continue, but continue he did. "It's the same color as your eyes... and almost as beautiful..." He blushed, as did she.

Rei put her hands up to her face, feeling her cheeks warm. "Do you really think so?" She asked, her voice quiet, peeking at him from between her fingers.

"Yes..." He whispered, not quite believing that he was saying this.

They heard a growl coming from the stacks. "There's no making out in the library!"

The two teenagers jumped up out of their seats, startled. Rei grabbed his free hand again, and made for the door. "Leaving now, Mr. Abelii!"

From his vantage point, sitting on the top of the bookcase, Peter Abelii grinned. "Ah, to be young, dumb, and full of raging hormones."

The bookcase accepted this without comment. It certainly had seen it's share of young men and women snogging amongst the privacy of the stacks over the many years it had been a bookcase in the library. While it enjoyed a good show, as much as any other article of furniture, it didn't have anything to add to the conversation that wasn't covered by what the librarian had just said.

A tall thin man dressed in a rather shoddy set of robes, leaning against the far wall eating a banana shrugged, not sharing the librarian's opinion. "I don't think those two have enough hormones to qualify as teenagers. What was up with that comment about her eyes? Where did he learn to talk like that, I wonder?"

The librarian scowled at the disgruntled looking mage. "Henry? When the hell did you get back? For that matter, why the hell are you back? What are you even doing here?"

Henry Langfellow shrugged again. "Got hired on mate. You're looking at the new Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor. Got in this morning." He pulled a second banana out of thin air and nonchalantly tossed to the librarian.

"You're the new DADA professor? How did they figure that one out?"

Henry laughed, a hollow and somewhat desperate sound. "I'm still alive and kicking, right? I think I've been exposed to just about every terrible and horrible thing that could be thrown against a person, and I'm still here. I've even shrugged off the killing curse!"

Abelii snorted, peeling the banana. "You ran away from it. It never hit you."

"That's the only thing to do against the killing curse. Unless you want to die, and all that."

"It's all you ever do, Henry. All you ever do is run away."

"That's not true, and you know it. Sometimes I scream while running away. It's all dependent in what you're running away from."

"That boy did more than run away, Henry. That was old Ikari's son."

"What, you mean Gendo? That's his son? How long has it been?"

"Years and years. Too long."

"It's too bad what happened to them. They should have gone on the road. It was obvious that they would settle down in here. Should have moved around some before coming back, if ever."

"Everyone comes back to GEHIRN eventually. She remembers all of her children."

"Some more fondly than others it seems. There certainly was no pixie-like girl making eyes at me in my chambers when I was shown them this morning."

"You could go talk to Dr. Akagi about it. That was her daughter."

"I wasn't aware that she had had a second one. Who's the father?"

"Unknown. She hid it the pregnancy well. I don't think anyone knew she was with child again."

"She didn't show with little Ritsuko, I recall. How is she doing? Naoko, I mean."

"I knew who you were talking about. She's probably still mad at you. Doing well enough. Hasn't gone topside in fourteen years except twice. Returns her books on time."

"Yes, she's really got her priorities straight." Henry rolled his eyes. "Well, I'll be sure to avoid her as much as possible."

"For once, your standard approach to life might be the correct course of action."

"My approach to life is always correct. I'm still here."

The librarian jumped down from his perch. Moving up next to his old friend, he lowered his voice. "Things aren't right, are they? If you're back here, it means that you've decided that you want to hide out in the most fortified place in the world. You're not running anymore."

Henry smiled. It was an unpleasant sight, his skin drawing taught over his skull, his patchy, disreputable looking beard sticking odd tufts of hair out at random. He likewise dropped to whisper. "A call was sent out, Abelii. Not the call, mind you, but a call. Word is that the Ghoul armies are marching in the tunnels. That the ravens are flocking in thousands to the necropolis. The hills are abuzz with activity. The wind speak to me, Abelii, and she whispers to me the promise of war. Of course things are bad out there. It has been nothing but bad since Impact. It's gotten better, I'll grant you, but it still nothing but bad news. Don't read into my movements so much." He shoved his hands into the folds of his robes, looking thoughtfully at the door. "So, what did she name the girl?"

"Rei Ayanami Akagi. She's in Ravenclaw, like her mother and sister."

"I suspected as much. The boy been sorted yet?"

"No word. He's not even here officially yet. Hasn't been a staff meeting about him anyways."

"What, you go to those now?"

"A lot can change in twenty years Henry."

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

"Well, that seems complicated. What if a person has none of the same attributes as their parents? "

Rei shook her head as she flipped through the photo album. "It's not all based on what house your parents were in, but it just happens because you're liable to have been raised with the same attitudes as them, so the hat puts in with others that share your same general drives and ambitions."

"But that seems so narrow-minded. Wouldn't it be better to expose people to a mix of different ideas and viewpoints? It could help remove old stereotypes."

Rei pulled a picture of Yui Ikari and several other young students out of the book and set it aside with a few others they had found. "Mages tend to get into trouble a lot when mixed up like that. They get into arguments, tempers flare up, then you've got people running around on fire. Especially with the ones who's magic depends on their worldview, like wizards."

"The ones who do whatever they want just by thinking about it."

She nodded. "It's more complicated than that, but yes."

"So a person can't have friends outside his or her house?"

"No, see, it's entirely up to you who your friends are. It's just that within your house there's a bunch of people you're most likely to get along with, because you all already think along in the same lines."

"What house are you?"

"I'm a Ravenclaw. We tend to grab up the researchers, the scientists and thaumaturges. Most of the 'thinking' type mages and scholars come to us. Very much focused on the world of academia. But we also get some very creative types, a lot of poets and musicians have come from Ravenclaw as well."

"Huh." He studied the blue and bronze scarf tie his mother wore in one photo. Also present in the picture was his father, wearing a tie of green and silver. He tapped the photograph. "What house did my father belong to? His tie is different."

"He was in House Slytherin. Also thinkers, but more like planners. Intelligent and cunning. Very goal oriented people, for the most part. They can be slow to act, but once they do, it is with a purpose. Many battle mages come from Slytherin, but the Gryffindors would never tell you that. It gets a bad reputation every once in a while because the idea that the ends justify the means is very popular with them, and some mages, just like normal people, can be horrible people. Cunning and ambition can often be turned for personal gain at the cost to others."

"What if a person isn't happy in the house they've been sorted into? What happens then?"

Rei bit her lower lip. As far as she knew, the hat had never been wrong. Granted, she didn't talk to many people, but that did not mean she kept her eyes and ears closed. She had never heard of anyone really complain of unhappiness in the hat's choice of house for them. "I-I don't know. I don't think that it's ever come up. Why?"

Shinji shrugged. "I just don't see myself fitting in with any of the houses. I'm not really impulsive or brave, and while I've never run head on into something, I've never sat and thought things out to much. I'm not that smart, and while I will do what I need to do to get he job done, I'm not really that hard of a worker."

"Well, those are all just basic descriptors. People are complicated beings even without magic. The hat will know where to put you. It always does." She slid another picture out, a rare one of just Gendo, the only one they had found so far. She tapped the photo. "Your father was very loyal to your mother, a quality mostly associated with the Gryffindor house. He also was a hard worker, a Hufflepuff trait. He knew that he had been given a rare opportunity, attending the school, and he worked very hard to ensure that opportunity wasn't wasted. If you were to look at the honor rolls for the years he attended the school as a student, you won't find his name, despite his excellent grades. He was a crafty planner, but he also enjoyed getting into fistfights with little to no prodding. If you were to look his name up on the detention lists, you will find his name listed many times over."

"Besides, I think that you sell yourself short, Mr. Ikari." She grinned at him as he rolled his eyes. "You certainly seized the chance to come here, and even when presented with things far outside the normal, you continued on. Sounds like a Gryffindor to me." She passed him the photo of his father, and shut the album. "Do you think this is enough?"

Looking at the stack of pictures, he nodded. Rei disappeared back down the hall, and when she came back she held an empty photo album.

Sitting back down across the table from him, she opened the book and slid it in between them. "Now we'll organize it, starting with the earliest pictures first."

They ran out of photos near the half way point. Rei again got up and went down the hall, motioning Shinji to stay put. She returned, carrying a camera.

"And now we'll take a photo of you for the book."

"A what for what?"

Lowering the camera, Rei looked at him. "You said that you didn't even have any pictures of yourself. So we'll get at least one in here for you." She raised the camera and snapped a photo. "And I'll go print it out."

"Um, Rei? Can I get something to drink?"

Plugging the camera into her computer, Rei called back down the hall. "Yeah, I think we've got some pumpkin juice left in the fridge."

"Pumpkin what?" Shinji opened the refrigerator, after eying the second one that sat humming away in the corner for a moment, and found a glass pitcher with an orangeish liquid with some cinnamon sticks floating in it.

_Maybe I'll just have water. Pumpkin juice just sounds... too weird. _He put the pitcher back in the refrigerator.

Sitting back down at the table with his water, he paged through the album. There were many more pictures of his mother than there were of his father. In fact, of the four pictures with his father in them, three had him included with his mother and a few other people. It was strange, to be able now to put faces to the names of his parents. To be able to see what people meant when they said that they saw his mother in his face.

Rei came back, and tucked a photograph of a slightly surprised and embarrassed Shinji Ikari looking up from the table into a page of the book. Grabbing a pen, she captioned it as 'First Day at GEHIRN'. Shutting the book, she looked at his choice of drink.

"You don't like pumpkin juice?"

"Ehh... I'm fine with water, really."

"If you say so."

They sat at the table in silence, the minutes dragging out before Shinji spoke up again.

"So... why do you have two refrigerators? If you don't mind me asking."

Rei smiled and jumped up. "I'll show you. One is for food, of course." She put a hand on the door to the second refrigerator. "This one is where Pen-Pen lives." She threw it open, dramatically, revealing a small television and a small chair, with a box with a blanket and pillow on a upper level, accessible by a ramp. The inside seemed to be larger than it should, which gave Shinji the beginnings of a headache as he looked inside.

"Umm.. Who's Pen-Pen?"

Rei, confused, looked inside. "Aww.. he's normally sleeping this time of day." She shut the refrigerator and sat back down. "He's probably in the bath. He's a penguin."

"A penguin?" _Of course she has a penguin for a pet, why not? Magical people can't be going around having normal pets like cats and dogs._

"A penguin. Oh, he's not a normal one, one of the super endangered ones. He was exposed to the massive magical spill over from Impact, and unlike most things, he didn't die. One of the battle mages brought him back with them when they returned from what was left of Antarctica, because they couldn't just leave him there. My mom did a lot of research on him, but she wasn't ever able to figure out why he lived while so many others died."

"So magic is a lot like radiation then, like what your sister said."

"Yes, it's like radiation, and magnetic fields, and religion, all rolled into one big package. You might not think so at first, but there is a science to magic."

Recalling some of what they had discussed earlier, Shinji nodded. "And that where the thaumaturges, enchanters, alchemists, and potion makers fit in. Their fields all have specific processes they follow, with reproducible results, for the most part."

Rei nodded as well, pleased that he had been paying attention. "And what about some of the others? Witches and warlocks, for example?"

"Umm... They are more... elemental in their approach. Not really anything to do with real elements, but the nature elements. Stuff like fire and water. They can make them do things otherwise impossible, like make a sword out of fire, or summon a wall of water."

"And sorcerers? What do they do?"

"They use spells, channeling raw magic from around them, focusing it with a spoken incantation and physical movement of a wand, to achieve a specific goal. The most common sort of mage, as anyone with magical talent is a sorcerer, but many of the other types of mage normally require a knack for it, or years of study and practice."

"Now, how about wizards?"

"The most powerful, and most rare type of mage. They impose change on the world around them simply because they will it to be so. While, with dedicated study, a person may claim mastery over all other realms of magic, it is not so with wizardry. One is either a wizard, or one is not."

Naoko, who had arrived without them noticing, clapped her hands. "Very good, Shinji. Now, I hate to interrupt your lessons, but you are needed in the Headmaster's office."

Shinji glanced at Rei. After spending most of the day with her he was starting to pick up her body language, and he didn't think she looked very happy. "Can Rei come?"

Successfully keeping her eye from twitching, Naoko nodded. "Yes, Rei, you can come too, so wipe that sad look of your face. The Headmaster has decided that it's time you met the Hat, Shinji."

Rei beamed, a smile on her face. "Is it going to sing a song for him?"

"That's up to the hat, now isn't it? I don't think it will, as we're only sorting one person today." Naoko's eyes twinkled as she watched her daughter. "But, you might get lucky. Now, let's get a move on."


	7. Chapter 7

The two teens silently followed a few paces behind Naoko through the castle up to the Headmaster's office. Shinji mentally ran through the things that Rei had told him about the hat. _It's as old as the castle, it was enchanted by the same mages who founded the original school, it sings a song every year that's apparently awesome, and it's never wrong about where it puts you. All I have to do is let them put the magical talking hat on my head. That's it. So why do I feel so nervous? What could possibly happen?_

At long last they came to Kozo's office. He looked up from his desk as they entered unannounced, and Shinji saw that he was not alone. Rei's sister was there, as well as the purple haired woman from the hallway, and three others; a tall, severe looking man, completely bald but who had a long, deep red beard, a short and squat woman with graying hair, and a man wearing a suit of dusty gray, and a somewhat forlorn expression.

Kozo, rising up from his chair, beckoned Shinji to his side. "Ah, there you all are. Now, Mr. Ikari, before we begin, I would like to introduce you to the House Heads. They are each responsible for one of the Houses here at GEHIRN, and each answers directly to me." One hand on Shinji's shoulder, with the other he motioned to the bald man. "This is Alexander Haversham, of Gryffindor. He is a Warlock of no small skill, being exceptionally skilled in the use of fire spells."

The large man wrapped a meaty hand around Shinji's. "A pleasure to meet you lad. I can't say that I liked your father much, but he stood against the Dark Lord and that's good enough for me."

Shinji could only swallow and nod as Kozo moved on.

"This is Victoria Belova. A very skilled Sorceress, she leads Hufflepuff. What class are you teaching this year Viky?"

The short lady smiled warmly while shaking Shinji's hand. "Oh, I'm covering Transmutations this year."

"Ah, that's right. Transmutations. A most interesting school of magic, that. Over here is Randolph Carter, the head of Slytherin. A master of prognostication he is, and he is an accomplished alchemist. He is the school's Potion's Master.

He shook Shinji's hand in silence, but nodded gravely to him. Professor Haversham scowled, but when he spoke his tone was light. "He's a quiet one, boy, but don't let him fool you, he knows more than he says." Shinji was unsure if it was a complement or a complaint.

"And my esteemed colleague from Gryffindor often speaks before he thinks, and leaps before looking. However", he said with the slightest of sneers, but in a good natured tone, "he has a tendency to land on his feet."

_Are all these people this weird?Are they friends or not? _Suddenly recalling Hoja's words about magic and the toll it took on people, he swallowed. _Maybe magic does make you crazy._

"Moving on," Kozo said with a look at the two men, "You've already meet the head of Ravenclaw. Naoko Akagi, our instructor of Thaumaturgry."

Naoko only nodded at Shinji, opting not to shake his hand, as they already knew each other.

"And I understand that you meet Miss Katsuragi earlier today."

The purple haired woman waved to him from her seat.

"Umm... Yes, sir."

"Good, good! Then we'll move on to the reason we called you here. This," he said, letting go of Shinji and picking up a very worn and battered looking hat, "this is the Sorting Hat. It has been passed down throughout the years from one headmaster to the next. Originally the hat of Godric Gryffindor, enchanted by the founders to flawlessly sort any and all potential students into the houses where they might excel in their studies. Please, sit down."

Swallowing hard, Shinji sat down in the offered chair, all to aware of the fact that he was the center of attention. It was unpleasant, to say the least. Rei, standing next to her sister, locked eyes with him as the Headmaster slowly lowered the hat down on his head. As he felt the brim connect, he shut his eyes.

A low, smooth voice filled Shinji's ears. "Soo... the son of Ikari comes home to GEHIRN at last. Hmmmm... Difficult to place you. A keen mind, yes, but not dedicated to your studies. You'll do what you have to in order to get by, but... there is no fire within your heart, but rage, yes. Hmmm... Vast... vast power... lies within you, but you lack the ambition to take it... the red right hand... and a spear, held sinister. You, the Minstrel Boy. So... I see what it is what you need, Ikari. Control, and practice. Much, much potential, but you must master it, lest it masters you. It will not come easy, Shinji Ikari, but you will do well in RAVENCLAW!", booming the final word, that it seemed to echo in his head. Suddenly, the hat was removed.

"Umm... what did it mean by all that?"

Kozo raised an eyebrow. "By all what, Shinji? The hat sorted you into Ravenclaw."

"Well, not that bit, I understood that, sir, but the other stuff."

Professor Carter spoke up, tenting his hands in front of him as he leaned back in his chair. "The hat often speaks to the candidate when sorting. How much it says to you varies, but it's all related to how and why it's placing you into your house. Why? Did it say something unusual?"

Naoko snorted. "Please, Randolph, the boy's only been newly exposed to this world of ours. Everything the hat said was probably strange. Rei. Take him to the dormitories and show him the layout." She pointed a finger at Shinji. "Mr. Ikari. Ravenclaw has a history of academic excellence. Now, I now know that your past education has been lacking, but that is no excuse here. You will be placed in a specific academic plan to help make up for that, and to take into account the fact that you are starting late. We **will** be discussing this later."

Shinji almost swallowed his tongue in fear as Rei hauled him out of the chair.

Once outside the large office, Shinji collapsed to the floor, hyperventilating.

Rei poked his shoulder. "Are you going to be OK? This is great news!"

"How... is...this... great... news?"

"Aww, my mom's not so bad. I mean, yeah, cause she **knows you** knows you, she'll probably be all over you to excel at your studies and stuff, but we're in the same house! That's a good thing." Shinji watched as her face screwed up in concentration. "I'm not sure what all will be incorporated into your school plan, but it can't be all that bad. OK, so let's go visit the dormitory and I'll show you the layout of it, alright? You lead me there. I want to see how much you were paying attention."

As they moved off down the corridor, a heated conversation was being held in the Headmaster's office.

Randolph threw his hands up. "Naoko, calm down. Your daughter was going to be somewhat involved with him no matter what house he was going to be sorted into. This is not the end of the world."

"Easy enough for you to say Carter! It's not like Ikari's spawn is going to be hanging around your daughter! I lost Yui to that man, and I'll not lose Rei to his son."

"Merlin's beard, woman! The man was a celebrated hero. Even if you didn't like him as a person, it's no reason to take it out on the man's son, who's never even known his father."

"ENOUGH." Kozo did not shout, but at the same time his voice was akin to thunder in the space of his office. "The hat has sorted him into Ravenclaw, and that is final. The boy won't be part of the general population, yes, but he is still a student here, and thus he needs a house. He'll be alienated enough because of his course load, and I'll not have him be further alienated for not having a house."

Carter shrugged. "If Naoko does not wish to deal with the boy for personnel reasons, which I am sure that we all understand," he said as he looked around the room, as if daring someone to speak up, "I will act as his studies adviser."

Naoko shook her head. "He's in my house, he's my responsibility."

Alexander stroked his beard, a habit of his when he was deep in thought. "It'd be fine, Naoko. You had history with the boy's father, and while you'd not hold it against him, you might let it slip out to him, and you'd feel terrible. Carter knew the boy's father, hell, he was his father's house head. Let him take the boy under his wing if he's up to it."

Victoria sat in silence sipping her tea. She wished the boy no ill will, but he made her uneasy. She wished for nothing more than he be set up with a home and some minor job in the town, and kept as far away from magic as possible. The sort of power that would so cleanly and utterly kill the Dark Lord... that sort of power came with a price. He was lucky he only had no memories of that time. He should be a gibbering wreck, his mind permanently scrambled, or physically deformed from channeling such power. To see him, to talk to him, it was not right. She had brought this up before, but the Headmaster had overruled her objections.

Her eyes flashing, Naoko hissed at Alexander. "I said I'd do it. End of discussion."

Kozo held up his hand, which was currently encased in fire. "Now that I've got your attention, let us get back to the matter at hand." He extinguished his hand, and poured himself some tea. "Now, Naoko, you will be responsible for his education. But, Carter, you tell the boy that if he ever needs to talk to someone, he can go to you. This isn't and ideal situation by any measure, but we will need to deal with it."

Carter nodded. Naoko glared at both men before sighing and nodding as well.

Smiling, Kozo looked to the youngest two faculty members present. "Now, as for you two. Misato, you'll be running him through the battle-mage exercises in addition to cultural instruction. Get him ready, and get started tomorrow. He's got a lot of catching up to do on how things work in our world, and not a whole lot of time before classes begin. If Naoko allows it" he said, looking at the still fuming woman, "you can have Rei help you. I understand that's she's already started doing so. Ritsuko, I want you finish preparations on the device. If it's really reacting psychically to him, I want to know what it's doing."

He looked at his watch, and sighed. "I guess it's time to let the rest of the staff know about our newest addition to the castle."

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

"So, this is our common room. Up to the left is the girl's dormitories, and the boy's are on the right."

Shinji interrupted Rei, holding up a hand to forestall the rest of her riveting descriptions of the dormitory. "Rei, how much do you know about the hat? How does it work? It said some... really strange things to me."

Rei stopped in the middle of her tour. "Um... well, I don't know all that much about it. It's a sapient artifact, and it's really old."

"It called me the minstrel boy, what ever that means. It said something about a sinister spear, and a red hand."

Rei's brow furrowed in concentration. "Um... OK. I guess that we can go look in the library and see what we find out about that. We've got a huge section on symbolism, for both arcane and mundane things, and stuff."

"Like dream interpretations? My old teacher said that that was all bunk."

"Well, it's used more with trying to figure out visions, foretelling and prophecies. It's kinda an inexact field, and sometimes you have to do a lot of research. No two visions are the same, even from the same person, and once a prophecy has been recorded, either by sound or being written, it can't be copied exactly the same way. It'll say something different, even if you try to say the words, you'll end up saying something else. So, naturally, there are a lot of books that compile all sorts of different things, phrases and imagery that seems to crop up a lot in these things, so people can try to figure out what's going on."

"Did the hat say anything to you when you wore it?"

Rei turned red. "Ahhh... it did... but I-I don't really want t-to t-talk about it."

"It's OK! I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked-"

"Well, it's not like you knew anything about it. It sometimes tells the student things, and some people like to talk about it, and others don't."

"Ah."

"Sooooooo... Let's go to the library!"

Shinji smiled softly as they left the Ravenclaw dorms. _At least I'll have one friend to start off with when everyone gets here. I wonder what sort of 'academic plan' Professor Akagi was talking about._

"Rei, what was your mom talking about when she said mentioned that 'academic plan'?"

"Oh. Well, umm... you're starting late you know."

"Right, I've heard people mention that."

"See, while a person with magical talent can start learning at any point in their life, most of the accredited schools like GEHIRN tend to start teaching students off when they are around nine to ten. You learn more than just magic and stuff here, I mean, the school is a real school. You learn math, science, literature and history. You'll get a general understanding of magical theory at least, and the basis for further education. The school also is a magical college on top of a private boarding school, where those so inclined can further train and specialize in a variety of magical fields. GEHIRN is noted for it's superior Alchemy and Transmutation courses, and we've been awarded several times as an Institute of Excellence by the International Magical Schools Accreditation Board."

"Nine or ten? But I'm sixteen."

"Yeah... so you're probably going to be taking a lot remedial courses. I don't know why they would wait this long to bring you here. I mean, it's not like they didn't know about you." She shrugged. "It's strange. They never even mentioned you to me before, either. I mean, we learn about you, of course, in history," she said matter of factly, mentally squealing in delight at how he turned red and looked shocked at that fact, "but they never mentioned anything about bringing you here or anything."

"Y-you learn about me in **history**?"

"Well, not you specifically. We learn that the Ikari's had a son who killed He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as an infant. It is kind of a big deal for us, I mean, he's possibly the greatest mass-murder in the history of the world. We never learned your name, or what happened afterwards, just that you were taken into protective custody. So, you're famous, but also anonymous. I mean, I didn't even learn your name until..." She trailed off suddenly, clamping her mouth shut, blushing as furiously as he had been a few moments ago.

"Rei? Is something the matter?" Shinji asked, even more confused.

"N-no! N-nothing!"

Luckily for the embarrassed girl, they arrived at the library, forestalling further discussion. Creeping past the main desk, where Mr. Abelii sat slumped over, snoring deeply as he slept, Rei guided them through the maze of stacks to where the reference books they sought were kept.

The thing about the Library at the Academy was that, like all libraries, it was a place of great power. This was more than doubly so here, because most of the books and knowledge contained therein were, for the most part magical or related to magic in some way. While the upper levels of the library was comprised of 'normal' books(inasmuch that any book could be said to be normal and non-magical), both fiction and non-fiction, and arranged as one might expect, with the Dewey Decimal System and whatnot, that simply did not do for the really magical tomes. When kept in a neat and orderly environment as that, they had a tendency to try to escape.

There is a saying, that knowledge wants to be free. Some people agree with this saying, and others don't. What so many people don't stop to think to ask is what does the knowledge want to be free to **do**? The wise know that knowledge brings fear. Some things are unknowable for a reason.

Thus, the magical section of the library was arranged in three separate sections, each one an ever shifting maze of book-cases and tables (and in the case of a few tomes that didn't get along with the other books, pedestals), all in order to keep the magical knowledge confused and unable to get out improperly.

Rei, long acquainted with the library, never got lost or turned around. She always could find what she wanted, if it was there. She was still barred from the Restricted section, and the Massively Restricted Section.

Shinji, of course, was lost three seconds into the maze.

Rei pulled down a few books and handed them to Shinji. "Here, take these." She grabbed some more for herself, and then walked back to a set of chairs around a table, all sitting within a circular ward inlaid on the stone floor in what Shinji guessed was iron, due to the dull red rust covering the patterns.

"OK, so, the older ones won't have an index, so we'll save those for later, since it'll take longer to look through them. The newest ones will follow proper formatting, so we can check them faster."

Shinji looked at the first book he pulled off his stack. Piercing the Veil of the Veil: Unwrapping the Mystery of Visions, a thick book bound in leather. In-fact, he noted that all the books were bound in leather, with the titles written in gold leaf. Rei noticed him studying the books.

"Mr. Abelii rebinds the books himself."

Nodding, he flipped the book open the index in the rear, looking for anything that looked useful.

After an hour of fruitless searching through the books, Rei closed her current tome with a sigh. "I wish Hikari was here."

Shinji looked up from his book. "Who?"

"Hikari. She's really good at research and stuff. She gets the best grades out of our year almost every time. I just can't help but think that she'd have found something in all this." Rei explained, waving a hand at the pile of books they had.

Shinji yawned suddenly. Rubbing his neck he sighed. "Isn't there some spell we can use to magic the information out of the books into our heads?"

"We're not supposed to do that. Also, no casting magic in the library. It upsets the books." Rei looked at her watch, her eyes widening when she saw the time. "We should get something to eat."

As if on cue, Shinji's stomach growled. "OK..." Rei stood, and piled their books into a neat stack on the table. Shinji looked at her as she turned to leave. ""Um... shouldn't we put the books back where we got them?"

"Oh, no! We're not allowed to re-shelve magical texts, because people are always forgetting to ground themselves first. The elves will take care of it."

Shinji bit his lip as he followed her out of the library. _Ground themselves? What, does the magic act like electricity? _He opened his mouth to ask her about that when a new voice called down the hall to them.

"Ah! There you two are! Wait up!"

Rei turned to the purple haired woman. "Hello Miss Katsuragi. Can we help you?"

Misato Katsuragi grinned. "Yep! It's my job to whip Shinji here into shape before this year starts. We're **supposed** to get started today, but I think it'll be alright if we start tomorrow." She pointed to Rei. "You'll be helping me, Rei, since you've already started working on him."

_Whip me into shape? What shape? I've got a broken arm!_ Alarm bells began ringing in Shinji's head. "Umm... Miss Katsuragi, what shape?"

"Why, getting you caught up with the basics of life as a mage, of course! We've also got to get your cover story down pat, and get you a firm grasp on magical theory."

"Cover story?" both teenagers spoke in unison, both confused.

Misato rolled her eyes. "Well, duh... I don't think that you'll want to go an be drawing all sorts of attention to yourself with that last name of yours, now do you? It'll make things really complicated for you." Shinji found himself nodding as the trio walked down the hall. "So, you'll be going by the name of Shinji Sato. They won't tell the school why you're here, just that you're going to be staying with us for the foreseeable future. If anyone asks, you don't want to talk about it, but even if you did, you're not allowed to. If anyone really presses you for info, you're here as part of a research project in another part of the Geo-Front, and you're here because your guardian doesn't want you just hanging out.

"OK..."

Rei nodded. "That makes sense. It's not like this would be the first time something like that has happened."

"Exactly so! Anyways, enjoy the rest of today, because we're getting down to brass tacks tomorrow."

"Miss Katsuragi, what will we do for his supplies? He doesn't have a wand yet, or anything."

Misato smiled cheerfully, and waved her hand as if Rei's concern was a physical object that could be brushed aside. "He won't be getting a wand. No wand for him until the Headmaster says so."

Shinji furrowed his brow in confusion. "But I thought you needed a wand to act as a focus for the spell?"

"Right! You're only going to be getting theory and abstracts. No practicals or applied magics for the time being. Now get on out of here! We'll meet up at the library at seven tomorrow morning."

With another cheerful wave, Misato split off from them and headed off down the hall humming a tune that Shinji didn't recognize.

"So, who is she? I mean, is she a teacher here? I noticed everyone just called her miss, and not professor or anything."

Rei shook her head. "No, she's not a professor. Mot all of the instructors here are actual professors. She's not even a regular teacher, she's here on assignment from the Imperial Battlemage Division to help scout and recruit new battlemages, and help lay a good foundation for the actual battlemage training. It's normally a posting for colonels, but even though she's just a captain, they gave her this post because she's really good as a battlemage, and she and her father are both alumni here."

"Her father was James Katsuragi, right? The one who attacked SEELE at the South Pole?"

"Correct."

"Wait, you said she's an **Imperial** Battlemage? Does that mean the King knows about all this?"

Rei gave him an amused look. "Of course. He's the king, isn't he? We're still citizens of the Empire. We just have a different set of duties and responsibilities. We make sure that extra-normal things don't harm his interests." She shrugged. "I guess we're a secret world, but we're not completely independent of the nations we live in. I mean, there are some elements that want to rule over the muggle world, and so we fight those who threaten His Majesty's realm. It's pretty simple."

"So the Americans have their own battle mages too?"

"Just about every major county has some sort of magical military. International treaties restrict magical usage to only other magical forces and extra-normal entities, like the Migo incursions. The U.N. also has it's own troops."

Shinji laughed. "What about the Vatican?"

Rei nodded. "They have their Inquisition. They say that it's not magic, but rather divine intervention. It's all the same in the end though."

"Oh."

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Shinji stared at his ceiling, unable to sleep. No matter how hard he tried, the elusive realm of blissful slumber seemed to be perpetually just beyond his grasp. His arm also itched like no other.

_You know, with all the crazy stuff Misato has me doing you'd think that sleeping would be easy. I'm so worn out I can't even count right. But the **knowledge**... it's like it's keeping me awake._

This was true. The mental exercises that he had to do to sharpen his mind to some unknown standard, the likes of which was never explained to him, coupled with the vast amounts of information on magical history and theory being drilled into him left him mentally drained at the end of the day. Then, because Professor Akagi was not satisfied with the hodge-podge education that his previous teacher had given him, he also had to do loads of regular coursework as well. He counted himself lucky that his teacher had been a native English and Russian speaker, so his grasp on the official languages of the Empire was better than the school's standard. Unfortunately, when she had found that out, Dr. Akagi forced him to also help Rei with her Russian, saying that her daughter was terrible at it. So, despite the fact that he longed for sleep, his mind kept calling up the things that he had learned, over and over and over.

There was no doubt about it, these past two weeks had taken a toll on him. Rolling over onto his side, he scratched irritably at the edge of the cast. He had been told that they would be taking it off soon, and he could not wait at all.

_Ugh... maybe I should go for a walk. It helped last night._

After putting up with insomnia for three days by just lying in bed, the night prior he had thrown on his shoes and went for a walk around the castle. No one had mentioned a curfew to him at all, and he reasoned that as long as he didn't go poking around in other people's business, it would be OK. And so last night he had walked the corridors of the castle from the ground floor (he didn't feel up to exploring the dungeons on his own, in the middle of the night) up to the highest floor of the main tower. After making his way back down to the floor with his room on it (three floors down from Rei's place, he unconsciously noted), he had collapsed into his bed and promptly fell asleep.

Unbenownst to him, he had been shadowed on this night's little excursion. As he had rounded on one corner in the great hallway, a man had entered the vast castle, in time to see the boy disappear round the corner. Now, the fact that the man had only now just arrived to the castle, in the dead of night, was no coincidence. He meant to pay a visit to someone, and it was of utmost importance that this visit go unnoticed by anyone. So, having seen someone up and about when there should be no one, and on top of that, it being someone he did not recognize, he felt it prudent to follow and observe this night time stroller.

Ryoji Kaji, groundskeeper's assistant to the castle, trailed just out of sight of the young man for the duration of the boy's walk, never revealing himself in any way to the wandering insomniac. When he came up to the door of the room that the boy had disappeared into, he noted a lack of nameplate on the door, signifying that either this apartment was meant to be empty, or that the occupant was important enough to have no nameplate. Of course, the maintenance people just might not have made one for the occupant. (They hadn't.)

Being a master of knowing his environment, Kaji was only a little surprised when the head of Slytherin suddenly came into view from the far end of the hall.

Smiling easily, knowing that his easy going and care free demeanor irritated Professor Carter **intensely**, Kaji lifted a hand in greeting.

"Yo."

Carter sighed. "What are you doing, Ryoji? Was your trip so boring that you felt the need to follow a student throughout the halls at night?"

"So he is a student. A bit early for them to be showing up, yes? Also, what's he doing in the private suites and not the dormitories? A younger relative of one of our faculty, perhaps? Besides, what matter brings you up from your cavernous dungeons?"

"Duty, Ryoji. Duty. I am to watch over our young man here for a portion of the night. You should go and talk to the Headmaster, as he wishes to speak to you and I do not." Carter sniffed slightly as his tone grew colder. The two of them had never really ever seen eye to eye, and would never be friends. This was not to say that there was no respect between them, despite one being a (almost) tenured professor, strong and skilled in the various arts of magic, while the other being a groundskeeper's assistant, with only a little skill in magic, but who was also forbidden to employ such magic.

"If you're keeping watch, then they think he's a Dreamer. Does he have it? Does he have the Key, Randolph?" Kaji's voice was almost sick with a desperate interest as he asked his second question, seeming to just barely keep himself from grabbing ahold of the mage's jacket. (Randolph Carter viewed the widespread mage's robes as 'quaint' and 'rustic'. Traditional or not, he wore them only when absolutely needed. His opinions on the similarly traditional pointed hat of the mage, well, let it suffice to say that they were not aired in mixed company)

Carter sighed again. "They think he is, but I haven't seen him Dream just yet. And no, I haven't even seen around him a hint of the Key, so don't even pester the child about it. And for Merlin's sake, don't mention it around the boy, or the Headmaster."

Kaji smirked, switching emotions almost automatically. "I'll be sure to take that suggestion, Ran-**dolph**." he said, deliberately stressing the last syllable in his name, knowing that he hated it.

Carter, not in the mood to play games with him tonight, shook his head and seemed to melt from view. It wasn't true invisibility, because if you already knew where he was, and if you squinted just right, you could pick up a shadowed shape hiding in the dark. It was hard, as you couldn't look right at him or focus on his outline. The magic made one's eyes slide off and away from him like water off a duck's back.

Chuckling to himself, the spy made his way to the Headmaster's office, entering without knocking, not because he was allowed to do so, but because his churlish behavior was part of a carefully crafted image. He pushed the boundaries of the rules just to see how far he could go.

It had been a long time since this behavior cost him license to practice magic, and it was only through the actions of Headmaster Fuyutsuki that he was not sitting in Azkaban, or worse, Arkham. Some (Carter included) speculated that this same behavior would end up costing him his life. (He agreed whole-heartedly and cheerfully with this sentiment)

He grinned at the Headmaster, as the older man looked up from behind his desk, looking not at all surprised at the man's presence.

"Well Old Boy, I think we're in a bit of a bind. Someone knocked over Gringott's, and buggered off with the stone."

Kozo gently put down his tea cup, and folded his hands in front of his face. "Someone broke into a bank that's impossible to break into, selected our vault, out of all other vaults, and stole the Philosophers' Stone. The Key to Immortality. The Aether Made Solid. The Supernus Solenoid."

Kaji gave a chuckle, hiding his hands in his pockets, slouching slightly. "Yeah, that would be the long and short of it."

Leaning back in his chair, Kozo stared at the ceiling. There was only one thing that he could say that he felt was appropriate in this situation.

"Well, **fuck**."


	8. Chapter 8

Shinji fiddled with his tie as the Headmaster continued his welcome speech, which seemed to incorporate some of the welcoming talk that he had gotten about a month ago. Rei, never taking her eyes from the podium where he stood, surreptitiously poked him in the ribs in an attempt to get him to stop fidgeting. It didn't really work.

"So, that's why you should stay away from the lake and the woods. Dismemberment is not a pleasant experience, as anyone who's had it done to them could tell you."

"Now, before we begin the feast, I have one last minor announcement to make. From time to time, we are called upon, as an academical institute of high standing, to play host to the children of people visiting here in the Geo-Front on other business than what normally concerns the Academy. Today we welcome the son of two important researchers, who are here working with one of the science research projects in the north sector. As they are very busy with their work, he has been enrolled here for schooling. Mr. Sato, if you would please stand up?"

Shinji stood up, to polite, if somewhat bored applause from the assembled students. He sat back down quickly.

"Mr. Sato will be sitting in on some of the magical theory and application classes, but will not be participating, only observing. I trust that every one of you will ensure that none of the... more imaginative pranks that seem to occur each year do not fall on his head, as he will of course be at a severe disadvantage, not being able to defend against them with the various counter-spells."

There was a mumbled assent from the gathered student body.

Headmaster Fuyutsuki beamed, his tone jolly, but still somehow carried a veiled threat. "Good! I wouldn't want his parents lodging complaints against the Academy for any abuse towards their son. It would be... very unwise to offend his parents, and none of the faculty will abide anything approaching what occurred to the exchange student from Durmstrang last year. But on that note, I would like to welcome you all, and let us eat!"

He raised his hands, and brought them down in one of the theatrical gestures that Shinji had rapidly noticed the elderly man was fond of as food suddenly appeared out of thin air.

As he helped himself to some of the food, Rei nodded to a pig-tailed girl sitting across the table from them. "Hikari, this is Shinji Sato. Shinji, this is Hikari Hokari."

"Um, hello. Rei's said a lot about you, Miss Hokari."

The freckled girl laughed. "You can call me Hikari. Well, she did say that there was going to be a transfer student, but she didn't include a picture." She shot a knowing look at Rei, who blushed and looked down at her plate. Shinji didn't understand what she was getting at but decided to try out the cover story they had spent a month practicing.

"Oh, well, there's pretty much no pictures of me. My parents are busy all the time with their work, so we don't have any family photos or anything. I'm actually kinda surprised that they brought me along this time."

Hikari looked up from scooping yams onto her plate. "Oh?"

"They normally leave me with one tutor or another. I've been bounced around so much, I haven't gotten much of an education, by any standard. But then they dropped this all on me at the last minute. I had no idea that magic even existed, or that my parents were doing research work at a place like this."

"What do your parents do, anyway? If they aren't mages, they must be pretty important to even know about the Geo-Front, let alone do research here."

"Oh, they do stuff with particles. Nuclear quantum physics, I think." He laughed nervously, scratching the back of his head. "I'm something of a disappointment to them, I think. I'm not very smart at all."

Rei frowned at the boy. "Don't let him tell you that, Hikari. He's picked up a lot in the month that he's been here. He understands most of the basics. My mom was having me help teach him three years worth of theory in a month."

"Wow. That is impressive. So, they put you in Ravenclaw, obviously. Did they put the hat on you, or did they just put you in here because you already know Rei?"

"Oh, they put the hat on me. It told me some weird things though, that I didn't understand. Does it always do that?"

"We tried looking answers in the vision books, but we've not had any luck." Rei looked imploringly at her friend. "I was kind of hoping that you would help us out with that.

"Hmm. Well, I guess we can look for answers later. I'll need to make sure that Toji hasn't let his studying slip over the summer, anyway."

"Toji?"

Rei snatched a biscuit from a passing bowl. "Hikari's dating this lump of a Gryffindor named Toji Suzahara."

"He's not a lump! He's actually quite good at what he does if he takes time to practice and study."

"Which he doesn't. He's too busy goofing off with Ken."

Hikari shook her head. "I know, but this year Kensuke's going to be too busy working on qualifying for the battlemage pre-exams to be able to get up into much trouble. I'm hoping that means that Toji will buckle down and take his studies seriously."

Another Ravenclaw student, a hulking giant of a boy shook his head while taking a break from shoveling food into his mouth. "Sorry, Hikari, but Carl's gonna be talking to Toji to see if he be wanting to join the team."

"**What.**" Hikari put down her food and stared at the huge boy, who merely shrugged.

"Just a head's up. The guy's good at it. If he does well enough on the house team, scouts might pick him up for league play after he graduates. You know this."

Shinji leaned over to Rei. "What are they talking about? Is this a regular sport, or a mage thing?" Over the course of the previous month he had learned that not everything, and in fact a whole lot of things didn't have anything to do with the fact that they were mages or had to do with magic.

"It's football. Each of the houses has a football team. Chester-" she pointed to the other boy, "plays as goalie for our team. His brother, Carl, is the captain of the Gryffindor's team."

Shinji nodded in understanding.

Hikari pointed a finger at Chester. "And when is Carl planning on asking him?"

Chester rolled his eyes. "I don't know. It wasn't really that big of a thing for me."

Hikari only snorted and muttered something about boys under her breath.

Chester pointed a fork in Shinji's direction. "So Sato, you into football any? We're always looking for good players to fill out the roster. You never know when someone might go down."

"uh... I-I'm not so sure about that me playing football would be a good idea..."

"Hey, don't worry about. Plenty of other extra-curriculars around the school for you to get involved in."

Shinji nodded, glad that he had dodged that bullet. Getting smacked around on a football field was not on his list of things that he wanted to do in his spare time. Feeling rather full, he piled his silverware on the plate, which Rei then tapped with her wand, causing the stack to disappear.

"Thanks, Rei." He noticed Hikari's puzzled look, and sheepishly smiled. "I don't have a wand. No-ones told me why, but I get to sit in on a couple classes and learn how you all use them for some spells, but I'm not supposed to actually do the spells. So, no wand."

Hikari nodded. "Which would make a bunch of the small tasks around here sort of impossible for you to do. Like send your dishes back to the kitchens, for example." She frowned, as she started satcking her own little pile up. "But that hardly seems fair. I'd think that they would stick you in the classes where you don't need a wand, or any magical talent. Like potions, for example. All that is is basically chemistry with really hard to find ingredients. As long as you have a recipe and access to the components, anyone, mage or no, can brew up potions."

The Ravenclaw prefect nodded to Shinji, who nodded back as the older student passed by, the first years in tow behind her. They had been introduced earlier, with Professor Akagi giving the prefect )whose name Shinji had already forgotten) the cover story before the sorting ceremony.

Shinji looked around to see that most of the large room was emptying out. Hikari looked at her watch, just as the castle's clock tower began to boom, sounding off the time.

"I'm going to go find Toji before curfew hits. I'll see you guys in the dorms later. Bye!" Hikari rose and left in search of her boyfriend in the milling crowds.

Rei nodded to Shinji and they also stood to leave. Shinji sighed inwardly as he checked off the feast from his list of things to deal with that day. The next thing he was silently dreading was the fact that he was going to have to sleep in a room with three other boys. That alone was more than the amount of people who slept under the same roof as him for as long as he could remember.

_At least I've got my own room I can hide out in after classes. And maybe my room mates will be quite. _He eyed some of the louder, more rambunctious students as he and Rei threaded their way silently through the halls. _But probably not._

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Shinji sighed as he slipped into an unoccupied seat near the back of the class. _Almost done for the day. Last class, Potions. And then I can get started on my homework. _He sighed again, but then brightened slightly. _At least I don't have to go weed any gardens. Or take care of those stupid chickens. _

Professor Carter did not enter the class so much as he seemed to flow into it, seeming to move from one point to another in a way that Shinji couldn't quite explain and made his eyes hurt to watch. Like when they had meet before, Professor Carter was wearing a suit of dusty black instead of the robes most of the faculty seemed to favor. Shinji found himself wishing for a normal school uniform, even if it was a suit akin to the Professor's, as he found the robes issued to him awkward and vaguely moronic looking.

He flatly had refused the optional pointed hat that some of the other students wore. No matter how much that Rei might protest about it's traditionalness and history, he was not going to wear that hat.

"Potions. An often overlooked field of expertise in the magical world, despite the utility and usefulness of even some of the simplest concoctions that can be made. Many regard the art and science of potion making as a mere prerequisite to the fields of alchemy and thaumaturgery, but I will tell you this; that while anyone can learn the basics and theory of potion brewing with relative ease and then move on to the so called advanced areas of study, for the few who take the time to master this art, they will be able to obtain results beyond the limits of many other field.

This is a subtle craft, and will require study and practice. But the potential to be a potion master lies in anyone. And woe unto those who would do ill to such a person, for the potion-master can heal themselves of even the most grievous injury, light their way in the darkest of places, bring darkness to a battlefield and hide amongst their foes to strike them unseen.

In other words, I can teach you to bewitch the mind, to ensnare the senses. I can teach you to bottle fame, to brew glory, and even put a stopper in death.

All that I will ask of you is that you apply yourself to your studies. Now, open your books to page forty-five and begin working in teams on the Basic Light Potion."

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

As before the school year started, days became weeks, and the weeks rolled into months, and before Shinji had noticed, two months had come and gone. He had fallen into an easy routine, and had come to know which students to generally avoid, who he could deal with, and his small (but dependable) group of people who had won his trust.

Toji Suzahara, true to Rei's initial description of him, was a bit of a lump, but loyal and steadfast, and true to Hikari's description, also quite skilled when he took the time to study and apply himself.

While he had come almost hand in hand with Hikari's friendship, so did Kensuke Aida come as a package deal with Toji. The bespectacled teen was a military fanatic, it seemed, interested in all aspects of the art of applied physical diplomacy, both magical and muggle. History, theory, practical application, it was all of interest to him. He was not often available to hang out or study with the rest of the group, as he was busy with Captain Katsuragi's after hours study program, but was guaranteed to be around at least two or three days a week.

Hikari, true to her word, had been helping Shinji and Rei in their quest to figure out the meanings behind the Sorting Hat's words to Shinji, which had seemingly burned into his brain, unable to be forgotten, often rising to the forefront of his mind when daydreaming, fighting with idle (and often embarrassing) thoughts of Rei for attention.

It was Saturday, meaning only a morning's worth of classes, with the rest of the afternoon supposedly for self study or obtaining the instructor's assistance with a class, but most students took the time for goofing off around the castle grounds, or, in the case of the older students, going to the small village near the castle, and in the case of the oldest students, spending it above ground, in Tokyo-3.

Hikari found Shinji and Rei eating a late lunch, each with their nose in a book. Shinji's was a third year potion book, having impressed Professor Carter with his aptitude for the subject and being advanced to a third year class (when pressed for an explanation, Shinji said that it was just like cooking, much to Ritsuko's amusement), and in Rei's case, her English Literature book. Neither one looked up as Hikari excitedly sat down.

"Hey guys, guess what I found out!"

Rei flipped a page in her book in response. "Hi Hikari. You found out that... um... I don't know, I'm terrible at guessing games."

Hikari rolled her eyes. "I found a reference to the Minstrel Boy!"

Both students lowered their books. Shinji marked his place before closing his, and then looked at Hikari. "Is this another heraldry thing? Because I don't see what a minstrel has to do with spears being held left handed. I mean, I'm right handed." He held his hand up for inspection. "And it's not particularly red, either."

Hikari shook her head. "It has to do with a prophecy. I almost missed the reference, but it was there in my book." She grabbed Rei's glass of juice and took a drink. "In all honesty, I found it by accident." She frowned as she swished the orange liquid around inside the cup. "It's weird though, and now I'm not sure if it even has anything to do with you."

"What prophecy?" As usual, Rei's voice was quiet, but thoughtful as she eyed the brown-haired boy sitting across from her.

Hikari shook her head. "It's an old, old one, from ancient England. I only found mention of it by accident, like I said." She pulled a book bearing the hand made binding from the library out of her bag. It was entitled Iron and Ravens; A Treatise of Ancient Brittania, vol III. "It doesn't say much about the prophecy itself, really only the name, which was, as one might guess, The Prophecy of the Minstrel Boy. It was the last prophecy laid down by a druid shaman before he died."

Shinji sighed. "Well, we're a little closer to figuring it out than we were before. Thank you Hikari."

The girl stared at them trough narrowed eyes as she tucked the book away into her bag.

"You know, I'm not stupid, guys. Are you going to level with me, or what?"

She watched as both her friends blushed, trading glances with each other, and then looking back at her. Rei closed her book and set it on the table. "I think we should tell her, Shinji."

Shinji nodded and shoved his book into his bag as Rei dismissed their plates. Standing up, he nodded to Hikari. "We really shouldn't talk about it out here, so let's go to my room."

Hikari's eyes widened as she too stood. "Your room, room? Not the common room?"

Both Shinji and Rei shook their heads. "No," Shinji said again, "My room."

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Hikari stared at the photo book, a look of both awe and sorrow playing over her features. She looked up from the book to Shinji, and then back again. "You really are the Boy Who Lived..."

Shinji nodded with a sigh. "I am. So you get why we're interested in finding out what exactly the Hat meant by it's comments."

"But why not just ask the professors about it? I mean, Rei's **mom** is one!"

Shinji shook his head. He wasn't quite sure how to explain his little misgivings with talking about it to the instructors. Rei was fine with the fact that he wanted to try to find out what the Hat had meant by themselves, being somewhat at odds herself with the faculty over her somewhat unique situation. The words and warnings of Aoba, Hoja and Richard still weighed heavily on him. They held the Academy in high regard, yes, but they also told him to not trust everything that they said.

The same could not really be said of the Academy on the subject of Ghouls and Shoggoths. To listen to what was said about them was to be downright terrified of them, but to Shinji they had been polite (overly so, in his opinion) and seemed nice enough.

Shinji had a nagging feeling that things were not as they might seem.

However, it was hard for him to put all of this into words. He was not a talkative person by nature, and even amongst his friends it seemed that he was in a fight with Rei to see who was the most taciturn. He won most of the time, keeping his mouth shut when seeing things that he didn't understand, opting to see if he could figure out what was going on rather than show his ignorance by asking a thousand different questions.

That and the fact that he hadn't exactly had a deep social pool when he was younger didn't help any.

"I want to try to figure it out without involving them. I can't really explain it... but if you don't want to help us, I'll understand."

Hikari looked shocked now, and stood up, her hands on her hips. "WHAT? Not help the Boy Who Lived? Are you crazy? You're... You're a hero!"

Shinji smiled. "OK, OK. But you can't let anyone know about it. It's supposed to be a secret."

Hikari nodded as she sat back down. "I can see why. I mean, you're famous! It'd be a lot of pressure, trying to live up to everyone's expectations!" Her eyes narrowed suddenly. "Speaking of that, don't think that I'm going to let you slack off on your homework too, just because you're famous!"

Rei rolled her eyes. " Don't worry about that, my mom's got that covered. So, what did the prophecy say?"

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Kozo smoothed out the front of his suit as he walked towards the pair of figures waiting for him in the lobby of the skyscraper that hid the main entrance to the Geo-Front. He hated having to wear the suits of the 'modern' world, preferring his very comfortable robes, but when one was out in public, one did what one must.

It didn't help any that the suits worn by the Ghouls were much nicer and newer than his own. It was a source of much discussion amongst Kozo's inner circle of friends and compatriots, how the underground dwelling savages kept their 'business' attire so well maintained, considering that most of them lived in graveyards and old subway tunnels and the like.

The two man-things turned from the large windows to face the wizard as he drew near. One drew his face into an approximation of a smile, but on the vaguely doggish features the effect was less than heart warming or friendly.

"Ahh, Headmaster Fuyutsuki! A pleasure, I'm sure." The ghoul's voice was raspy and dry, and his words were heavy with sarcasm. "What do you want?"

"Come, there is no need for unpleasantness, James!" Kozo spread his arms in a welcoming gesture, as if he was going to for a hug. "Let us move to a more private venue, shall we?"

James snorted. "Let's not. I'm not planning on sticking around here any more than I have to. What do you want?"

"I'm more interested in what you want, James. In what the Ruined City wants, to be more precise."

The ghoul narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "You know what we want. To serve the Master. To ensure that what was allowed to happen before is never again possible. To make up for the failures of you and your kind, Mageling."

"And what if I told you that we might allow a small, **minor**, ghoul presence inside the Geo-Front?"

"I'd wonder what you'd want. And how would you keep this hidden from everyone else? I know that we'd be an unwelcome presence." He grinned, showing off all his teeth, all of them pointed and stained yellow. "Of course, you also have to know that once we're there, you'll never be able to keep us out. All it takes is a few dead bodies in the ground. Where there's a grave there's a way."

Kozo's smile never faltered, never showed the revulsion churning in the pit of his being. _This is the hard part, _he told himself, _but this needs to be done. _"Actually, that would be one of the terms of any agreement letting you in. No graves being dug. But think of it, James. Being closer to the boy. To actually watch him, instead of just the entrances that you know about."

James scowled at him before turning to face the windows again, watching the flow of humanity through the mirrored glass. "Which brings up my question again. What do you want?"

"A few months ago, a bank was robbed. One particular vault was opened, and one particular item was removed. Our agents so far have had no luck in finding the item or the people responsible. We wish to enlist your aid in this matter."

"Seriously? You want us to go looking for something that stolen from a bank?" James looked back at Kozo, shaking his head. "I know that your kind views us as savages and dog-men, but really?"

"What are you going on about James? I know that you're not trying to tell me that you don't have some of the best trackers and hunters in the world."

"That is a vicious stereotype. We're not dogs."

"You're purposely misconstruing what I'm saying and taking it as an insult. Your people are hunters, James. Now look me in the eye and tell me that the Loup-Garou can't find anything or anyone that they are looking for."

Bloodshot eyes stared directly into Kozo's, as if looking directly into the mage's soul. "We weren't able to find the Master wherever it was that you stashed him for fifteen years. And trust me when I say this mage, trust me and listen well. **We were looking**."

_At least the wards were good enough to keep them out and away. It still doesn't answer the issue about that plane engine. _Kozo sighed, and turned as if departing. "Well, if that's how you feel about it, I suppose that there's no point to discussing this further."

"I never said that we would never look. Just that we might not find. What in particular was taken?"

Kozo's smile returned. "Well, it's an orb of red stone, slightly larger than a man's skull..."

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

"Hello, Shinji. How are you doing?"

"I'm fine, Professor Akagi. Is Rei home?" He held up a book as a way of explanation for his presence. "We're doing a study group for the Potions test on Saturday."

"Ah. Well, she should be done practicing in a little bit, so you might as well come in."

Shinji followed Naoko inside, lining his shoes up next to the door before heading on into the kitchen, where it had been mandated that when he visited that was where they stayed. They also weren't supposed to hang out in his small apartment either, but they both figured what she didn't know wouldn't hurt them.

"You want anything to drink? Some pumpkin juice?" Naoko poured some tea for herself from a kettle that Shinji knew was enchanted to always keep the water in it hot. It was a source of much confusion to the boy how... mundane most of the magic he saw on a day to day basis actually was. It certainly made things easier, well, easier for the people who could do magic, but on the whole it was rather underwhelming. He had yet to see anything done on the level of the firefight on the night that he had been brought to the castle, and while he certainly was in no hurry to experience that again, he had yet to see something that was even a little like that. Even in the odd assortment of classes that he was in, the most impressive things had been seen in his Potions class (which was his favorite class, hands down); but that class, as had been pointed out many a time to him by some of the lesser friendly students, barely counted for magical course credits. Anyone could do it. It was just that a muggle would have a difficult time (but not impossible) getting all the components needed for even some of the simplest potions.

If he had been more of a technically minded person, he would have wondered why the mages didn't take advantage of the fact that they constantly flounced the laws of thermodynamics and physics on a regular basis. If they could enchant a teapot to ensure that it kept the water in it at a certain temperature, why not make a steam turbine engine that needed no fire? Just enchant the boiler to boil water forever. They could provide more than enough energy to supply the world forever.

Shinji, however, was far from being a technically minded fellow, and so the question never came up. Even though one could not at all accuse him for having a flair for the dramatic (he could be very literal minded at times), he nonetheless thought that the mages should be doing something... more flashy or impressive than what was being taught and what he was seeing. So far, much of the magic seemed to revolve around the mages being some of the laziest people ever. Moving dishes and food from the kitchens to the dining-hall. Heating the castle. Cleaning clothing. Opening doors, moving even the smallest of objects around.

And that didn't even cover the practical jokes that he saw go on around him. People seemed to take the Headmaster's warning to heart, though, and none were ever directed against him; a fact that he was glad of. Some of them seemed like they could hurt a person if they didn't have the magical know how and skill to deal with the issue.

"No thanks, Professor." he said as he sat down. "I'm still not really used to it."

Sipping her tea, she watched him as he squirmed a little under her implacable gaze. "Rei likes pumpkin juice." she pointed out, as if this somehow made the beverage more appealing.

Shinji, by dint of being both male and a socially stunted person in general, did not get what she was hinting at. In all actuality, it was because of both these things also made him not get the extremely subtle (but they were there) hints that Rei sometimes dropped around him, and the much less subtle (but still subtle) hints that Hikari dropped to him about the hints that Rei was dropping.

He thought that was just how girls acted normally.

So, in his defense, everything that he said in response to such things made perfect sense in his context. Unfortunately, that context made him seem rather blunt and thicker than lead to everyone else, including Toji, which was saying something.

"Well, Rei's grown up drinking that stuff. And just because she likes it doesn't make it any less weird, Professor. I mean, Toji likes to play football but that doesn't mean I do."

Shinji had no idea how much his answers to questions like that one eased Naoko's mind.

Her smile a little warmer now, she nodded at him absentmindedly. _Good, good. At least that's one less thing to worry about for now. _"Carter's been keeping me appraised of your progress in his class, Shinji. You're doing very well for someone just picking it up."

He blushed slightly, as he often did when being complemented. Or scolded. He did not, however, stammer. He had been getting better at that in the past months, at least. "Thank you, Professor."

"You know that if you've got any issues or questions regarding anything that you can talk to me or Professor Carter. Anything from school work to stuff in general as you get used to life here."

Shinji nodded. "Yes, Professor. I don't have that many questions though. I mean, I can normally figure stuff out by watching everyone else."

"How's your work with Katsuragi coming? I know that she cut the days you have to show up down some, but are you keeping up with the exercises?"

"Yes..." he paused, looking uncertain. "Professor, that is something that I don't understand. Why am I doing pre-battlemage exam practices? Why am I even taking some of the magic classes that I'm in at all? If I don't have any magical ability, it just seems like it's a waste of time to me."

"Good heavens, what makes you think that you don't have any magical ability, boy?" She set her cup down on the counter as she stared at him. "If you had no magical ability we certainly wouldn't be bothering to have you in those classes at all!"

His look of confusion threatened to send Naoko into a fit of giggles. "But, if I've got magical ability, then why don't I have a wand? Why aren't I practicing the spells that I'm watching the others learn?"

"Because you're either a very powerful mage Shinji, or you have a natural reflexive magical field. We need to make sure that you understand all of the basics before letting you even try to practice them, otherwise catastrophic things could occur. You probably won't even start doing that until everyone leaves for the summer break." She looked him dead in the eyes, making sure that he was paying attention. "Now, just because I've told you this, which you really should have figured out on your own; don't go and try to practice things in secret. You, as a baby, barely a year old, managed to do something whole armies could not do. That's not something that should be thrown around lightly. But, I suppose we might as well do something with you as far as testing to see how you react to things."

"How I react to things?"

"Yes! When the Dark Lord tried to kill you, he used magic. Well, the theory that's widely accepted is that you reacted instinctively to it, and that reaction is what went and killed him, the minions he had with him, and burned everything around you to ash, in addition to broadcasting the whole thing on all the scrying stones being used at the time. To be perfectly honest, you should not be alive. That should not have happened. This was the main reason why Kozo told everyone to not use you as target practice for practical jokes; there's no way to tell what could happen!"

"But... if it's so dangerous, why let me mix with everyone else? What is someone didn't care that they weren't supposed to do that? I don't want to hurt anyone!"

She sighed. That he didn't want to hurt anyone seemed true enough. He even went so far as to not even want to offend anyone. Unfortunately for him, destiny and prophecy had different ideas about him hurting others.

Even if half the prophecies they associated with him actually weren't, the ones they knew for sure ended any argument on the matter of him being a pacifist. The boy was going to lead an army before he died. And that wasn't taking into account the machine sitting in the deepest dungeons of the castle.

"That's why we've placed shields on your clothes, to negate and reflect anything anyone sends your way. But I'll talk to Kozo and Ritsuko and see if we can start testing some low level spells on you after classes are let out in the afternoons."

"Low level spells? Like levitation?"

"Exactly like levitation." Naoko refilled her cup from the kettle. "I know that it must seem strange, but keep in mind that magic is a dangerous tool. It can be very useful, when harnessed properly, but it is still a very real threat to each person that uses it and who is around those that use it. You know that it takes a toll on the mind."

Shinji nodded. The mental and sometimes physical costs of magic were ground into each student almost daily. It only made the way that the people around him used their talents seem that much stranger and wasteful, even though the 'cost' on the spells that were casually flung about over the course of a normal day were negligible, but it still bothered him a little.

A knock on the apartment door interrupted the conversation. Naoko, with a glance at Shinji, went down the hall to answer the door. Hikari smiled at the Ravenclaw Head, ducking inside while dragging Toji in with her. Kensuke bowed to Naoko, as one of the rules of the pre-battlemage course set required the students to show all the traditional formalities and honors to the faculty and staff of the Academy.

"Quite the study group you have here." Naoko said, the smile on her face at odds with her serious tone.

Toji nodded emphatically and enthusiastically, no doubt in part to the fact that his girlfriend only consented to his being on the Gryffindor's football team if he kept his grades up to her standards. As the girl was one of the best in the whole House, Naoko knew the boy was not having an easy time of it. "Yes m'mam. The Prof here's a right genius when it comes to Potions class."

Naoko turned an amused look on Shinji, who was turning red and wishing that he knew a spell for invisibility, even as Hikari slapped Toji's arm.

"Prof? As in, Professor? Professor Ikari? Was there a faculty change when I wasn't looking?"

Hikari rolled her eyes as she set her materials up on the table. "No, it's just a nickname that someone came up with when he completely aced the last potions test with a custom potion of fire. Professor Carter said that he hadn't ever seen a potion quite like that one."

Leveling an appraising look at her student, Naoko sipped her tea. "Interesting. He never mentioned it to me."

Kensuke looked up from his book and notes with a wink to the cringing 'prof'. "I think it's because he told Shinji not to tell him the secret ingredient that he used. He wants to try to figure it out, and I don't think he's want to tell the other teachers that Shinji the muggle stumped him."

Shinji opened his mouth to speak, but Naoko caught his eye and shook her head negatively, quickly tapping a single finger to her lips. Looking a little crestfallen, but understanding what she meant, he snapped his mouth shut again before the others noticed.

Glancing at her watch, she set her cup down on the counter and headed for the door. As she was putting on her shoes, she called back to the group waiting in the kitchen. "Hikari, be a dear and go let Rei know that you're all here. She's practicing, and you know how she gets."

"Sure thing, Professor!" Hikari called back even as she made her way down to her friend's bedroom.

Shinji looked at his friends as they paged through their notes, waiting for the girls. This wasn't the first time he had heard mention of Rei practicing something, but whatever it was had never seemed to come up in conversation before, like so many things dealing with the blue-haired girl. She didn't advertise her hobbies, and if you didn't already know about them, you probably weren't going to.

Of course, the same could be (and was) said about him, although he didn't know it. He had a tendency to be oblivious to the things people were saying about him to the point of comedic levels.

"What's Rei practicing?" he asked, breaking the silence.

Toji and Kensuke shared a look at each other, and then looked at Shinji, and then back to each other.

"Ah, it's a musical instrument." Toji offered helpfully. "She started playing... how long ago was it Ken?"

"She started when she was six." The bespectacled boy answered, turning back to his book.

Shinji brightened at this bit of news. He had his cello, of course, although he didn't practice with it as much as he should. He was, however, always trying to find new things with which to have non-awkward conversations with Rei about, and music seemed as good as any.

"What does she play? I don't think anyone's ever said anything about it. She's...uhh... she's not in the band, is she?" He fervently hoped that he hadn't somehow missed out on a major fact like that. While they didn't spend all their free time together (far from it), they did spend enough of it to the point where he really should have picked up on something like that.

"No, she's not in the band." Kensuke answered to his almost palatable relief.

Toji grinned. "It's not exactly a band instrument. Besides, she's not much one for doing things with large groups anyways."

Shinji, feeling like he was getting the run around, narrowed his eyes at the two boys who were carefully not looking at him. "So, what does she play?"

The boys looked at each other, but Toji held up in invisible (imaginary) business card.

Sighing and shooting him a dirty look, Kensuke looked back over to Shinji. Taking a deep breath, his expression grave, said with all the seriousness of the grave; "She plays the bagpipes."

"Oh. Wait, what?"

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Kozo looked up from his desk as Naoko walked in, a frown on her face. "What's bothering you now, Naoko?" he asked, going back to the report he was reading. "And if you're still having second thoughts about the ghoul outpost in the woods, we can't really kick them out if we want to keep them looking for the stone. Besides, our friends in the woods tell me that so far they are abiding by the agreement to not bury anything. They're acting in good faith."

"I didn't come up to complain about that, but still... I don't like having them in the Geo-Front. If the student's parents knew about it, it'd be a disaster. It's bad enough having them prowling about in Tokyo-3."

"On the bright side, while missing persons reports are up, nighttime crimes of all manner are virtually non-existent."

"Oh, that makes it all better then. It's all OK for the ghouls to eat people, because they're causing the crime rate to drop! Are you insane?" She collapsed onto the couch with a sigh.

Somewhat ignoring her and not looking up from his report, he pointed to a letter sitting on the short table by the couch and chairs. "You might want to read that. His aunt and uncle aren't very happy with us, and to a lesser amount with him."

"Are you serious? We told them that we'd take care of him. They barely did anything with the boy; why are they raising a fuss now?" She picked up the letter and began scanning it. "They don't trust **us**? That's rich. What I want to know is what exactly they think that they're going to do when we don't fork him back over to them to live on a farm for the rest of his life. Which, I might add, would be bloody and short. Something compromised those wards, something powerful. Otherwise that jet engine would have shattered into a thousand pieces when it went onto their property. We can replace the wards, but there's no guarantee that what ever voided them in the first place won't do it again." She looked back over to the headmaster as he continued reading. "Did they ever find out what voided them? And how they managed it without tripping the alarms we set on them?"

Kozo held up the paper that he was reading. "No. When the team went out there, they found that everything had been destroyed. All the wards and alarms. All gone. No hint as to how long it had been either."

The color drained from Naoko's face as the implications of that sank in. A full complement of nine mages, including three wizards of no small talent, had set the wards and alarm spells that were to guard and shield the boy and his family from any harm or ill intentions. The spells should have lasted for just about forever, and would have kept the land and buildings safe from just about anything, excepting things like volcanic explosions. Breaking those wards would have taken an immense amount of power, and the mages involved should have felt their spells breaking. Even if they didn't, a wide variety of alarm spells had been placed as extra insurance, but somehow even those had not been tripped.

"How is that even possible?" She got up and began pacing back and forth before stopping mid-stride, a horrified expression on her face. "Wait, what about the wards and alarms around the Geo-Front? If someone canceled-"

"I already have people working on it. So far everything checks out. I'm also having them check to see if they can detect any new spells."

"Who's heading up the team?"

"Langfellow." He held up a hand to forestall any objections, but it was in vain.

"Henry is a pompous ass, and a coward."

"He's very good at what he does. Just because of your personnel history with him is no reason not to trust him."

"My personnel history? Kozo, the only reason that man wasn't a Death Eater was because he's too craven to be one!"

"He faced the Dark Lord. He gave us invaluable information during the wars as a spy. At great risk to himself, if you remember."

"I don't trust him, and I think your trust is misplaced. The man is a rat. And he didn't face the Dark Lord, he ran away from him! He'll be the first to tell you that!"

"Personnel opinions aside, Naoko, I know that you didn't come up here to complain about that. We've had this discussion before. So what's really bothering you?"

The Ravenclaw head buried her head in her hands, sliding them up to run her fingers through her dark hair, tugging gently as she reached the top of her head. "It's the children."

"There are many children here, if you hadn't noticed."

She glared at him, not in the mood for his games. "You well know what children I'm speaking of."

"What about them? He's been doing well in his classes, hasn't gotten into any fights, and hasn't shown any of the traditional Ikari tendencies yet. He hasn't even shown hints of the Silver Key being present in his dreams. I also have noted a severe lack of him and Rei sneaking off together and snogging, unlike several other students they know. Rei, for her part, has been slowly creeping out of her shell. So, again, what about them?"

"I'll give you the fact the boy seems to be completely oblivious to any sort of female charms, but that won't last forever. He's in an awkward place right now, but sooner or later he's going to wake up. Rei's not as bad as him, and I'm sure that she's got her sights set on him."

"Why are you so sure of this?"

Naoko looked at her friend and occasional lover with disgust. "Are you serious? She's your god-daughter. You haven't noticed the way she acts around him? I know that you're not that dense. Before we know it they **will** be off snogging behind our backs. And I know that I **am not** going to be the one to give him the talk."

"So she's making eyes at the boy. If it bothers you that much tell her that she can't see him anymore. But you and I both know that she's come out of her shell some, and it's because of him."

"I just don't know if it's a good idea that they're becoming friends the way they are. It doesn't bode well for the future." Naoko groaned, and smacked a hand to her face, before growling. "Rei Ayanami Akagi, stop scrying on your own, or so help me I will ground you like you've never been grounded before."

Kozo stared at her like she had suddenly grown ten feet taller and sprouted wings before laughing, understanding what had set her off. "I wonder how much of that she heard before the stones went dark."

"God, I hope she didn't hear the whole thing." Her eyes went wide and one hand flew to cover her mouth in shock. "Wait, when did the bank vault get broken into?"

Kozo, immediately getting what she was saying, started digging through the piles of paperwork that covered the desk looking for the ones concerning the robbery. Naoko joined him, cursing under her breath as they shifted through the piles, until she found one of the reports. As he kept searching for the others, she scanned through the pages for dates and times.

"It should be about that day and time, according to this one. Cthulhu's beard, Kozo. Who else was scrying then? Was it just Rei?"

"She was the only one to complain about it. She did ask Beruski about them, didn't she? Did she mention it later?"

"She said that it wasn't like anything she'd seen before, but it had only lasted ten minutes before it ended."

"What was that Rei say it was? Darkness, with a pulsing red light?"

"I think so... Let me call her and get her up here." She pulled out her phone and started dialing.

Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier!

Two students, holding hands were taking a stroll along the castle grounds, in the time honored fashion of teenagers in the throes of young love everywhere. They had been warned off from entering or even going near the forest, but really, in the controlled environment of the Geo-Front, would they really have such dangerous things running around free?

In a nanny state, perhaps. If this wasn't a world where one was supposed to actually pay attention to and obey the rules and regulations, possibly. But in the world of the mage, in this world where even the mediocre can call forth fire from their hands, where even reading certain books would render you into a insane, babbling wreck, yes, there would be dangerous things running around in the forest.

Where else would one establish a safe haven for the nicer (from a human point of view) demi-human woodfolk, to say nothing of the wild magical creatures?

Unicorns certainly weren't urban animals by any stretch of the imagination.

As the pair slipped into the shadows of the trees to neck in privacy, safe and secluded, away from any prying eyes in the castle, two pairs of yellow, bloodshot eyes watched them hungrily.

As she giggled, his warm breath tickling her as his mouth traced the curvature of her neck, ran her hands through his hair, which he was wearing long as was in fashion for boys this year, completely oblivious to the soft, almost imperceptible sounds of approaching feet.

Smiling, her eyes closed, she lifted her arms up, stretching, and shrieked as something grabbed her wrist.

Kaji scowled at the pair as he forcibly hauled them to their feet. "What the hell do you two think you're doing out here? Didn't the Headmaster tell you all that the forest was off limits? In fact, when was it ever alright for students to come down in here?"

Not waiting for a reply from the red faced and shaking students, he shooed them out of the woods, promising that if he caught them in here again that he would have the Headmaster put them on extra duty helping him around the castle grounds. Once he was satisfied that they were well away, he went back to the small truck parked near the entrance to the trail, sitting down on the lowered gate.

He did not have to wait long before two oddly loping men came out from the forests, one wearing a tattered pair of jeans and a heavily soiled shirt, the other in what looked like the remains of a tuxedo jacket and pants. Neither one wore shoes, and both stared unnervingly at the waiting man.

Hopping down from the truck, Kaji jerked his head to the bleating goats tethered to the side of the truck's bed. "Here's dinner." He eyed them cautiously. "And I'll be wanting the remains back tomorrow. You're not supposed to be burying them. And don't tell me you ate the bones. I don't care if you like to chew on em, I want them back."

The tuxedo wearing ghoul sneered at him as his friend climbed up into the truck. "It doesn't work that way, mageling. It needs to be men's graves, with proper markers. Animals don't count. And we gave our word, for the sake of the Master."

"Yeah, well, I'll be wanting the bones back anyways. And don't think I don't know about you watching them kids just now either."

The ghoul's sneer only deepened, and if Kaji were a lesser hearted man and only an assistant groundskeeper, it very well could have caused him to lose his lunch. However, the spy for whom agriculture and gardening was a hobby, was made from very stern materials, and only scowled at them as they led their bleating food up and into the forest.

Kaji was by no means as man over burdened with scruples, but he had a severe dislike for many of the demi-human species. To even allow a small group of ghouls into the Geo-Front was something that he had railed against in discussion with the Headmaster. Some lines should not be crossed, and to him, any sort of deal with the dog-men was crossing a few of them. He would bring this almost incident up with the old man later on tonight, but he knew that it wouldn't do any good. The ravens weren't having any luck finding that damned stone, and in desperation Kozo had turned to the ghouls.

Kaji took a look at an oddly shaped crescent moon scar on his right forearm, his expression darkening further. Some lines should not be crossed at all.


End file.
